RELATIVE OF "VEGA 5" CREW MEMBER CLAIMS ULTIMATUM

A relative of one of the Mozambican crew members on board the “Vega 5”, the Mozambican fishing boat hijacked by Somali pirates on 27 December, has claimed the pirates are threatening to kill the entire crew if a ransom of five million US dollars is not paid within a week – but the Mozambican government says it has received no such ultimatum.The claim was made by Tina Oliveira, sister of crew member Olivio Oliveira, who claimed she had been in telephone contact with her brother. He had warned that he only had a week to live if the government, or the owner of the vessel, the Spanish-Mozambican joint venture Pescamar, did not pay the ransom.The independent television station, STV, rang the number which Tina Oliveira said had been used to contact her. It had the correct country code for Somalia (252), and after several attempts the reporter got through.STV’s sister publication “O Pais” announced that this was indeed a contact with the pirates – but anyone who listened to the conversation on the STV Thursday night news would conclude that the man on the other end of the line was certainly not a representative of the pirate gang.First, he simply told STV that they had the wrong number. Then, when STV asked how much money the pirates wanted, he suddenly realized what the conversation was about – and demanded 500 dollars per hostage. Since the Somali pirates usually deal in sums of millions of dollars, this suspiciously low figure – which was no mistake, since the man repeated it – should have alerted STV that they were unlikely to be talking to a genuine pirate.When STV asked to speak to one of the Mozambican hostages, the man at the other end simply repeated his demand for money. A dialogue of the deaf ensued in broken English, with STV repeatedly asking to speak to a hostage, and the supposed pirate just saying “send the money”.The demand can hardly be taken as serious – apart from the low sum, there was no attempt to indicate how or where the money should be transferred.Reacting to the ransom claim, Fisheries Minister Victor Borges said the government had received no demands from the pirates.He pointed out that the pirate norm is to contact, not governments, but the companies that own the ships they have hijacked. Furthermore, the pirates had never before issued deadlines – if the pirates had indeed threatened to kill their hostages in a week, this was a break with previous behaviour.In addition to the “Vega 5”, pirate gangs are holding 36 ships. Borges pointed out that in all 36 cases the pirates had never notified governments, but had always put their ransom demands to the ship owners.Bibito Oliveira, the brother of Olivio Oliveira, claimed that Pescamar is only paying the families of the 19 Mozambican hostages an allowance of 1,000 meticais (about 32 US dollars), a month, a sum that is grossly insufficient to maintain a family.But Borges said that in reality Pescamar is paying the families the full wages and allowances of the kidnapped crew members.