MV Iran Deyanat - Hijacking

Hijacking

The ship had declared as cargo minerals and industrial products such as iron ore, but Somali negotiators are alleged to have said that the true cargo included arms and chemical weapons. The Deyanat had departed from China with the purported intent of selling its cargo in Germany, but Somali officials say that the ship was truly headed to Eritrea; in addition, the ship's arrival in the Gulf of Aden was supposedly "suspiciously early." "Many of us ran out on the deck. We saw a group of men in two tiny speedboats close to the ship. The ship’s radar had failed to pick them up. The men were firing in the air," crew member Jeevan Kiran D’Souza said. "There were 16 of them. They threw a ladder fitted with grappling hooks over the side of the ship and clambered aboard. They stormed all cabins and herded the entire crew into a small room, and told the captain to cut the engine." After the hijackers took control of the ship, they used the Deyanat to tow their boats along. They shuttled between Reassban, Reassaaf, and other locations (purportedly to evade rival pirate groups) before meeting their boss, "Abdul Hakeem," and finally mooring off the coast of Eyl in Somalia—which is allegedly the base of a crime syndicate. In fact, multiple other pirated ships were moored near the Deyanat. The number of pirates guarding the ship included 50 on shore and 50 on board.