A knock at second engineer Syed Hussain Yousuf’s cabin door.
“Pirate attack.”
Gun shots.
Three minutes later, a dozen pirates were aboard the Honour 25. They showed their guns to the diesel tanker’s crew. Everyone to the bridge.
It was the afternoon of April 21. For five months, most of the 17 crew would remain confined to that space, no more than 50 feet long, seated, leaving only when escorted to the bathroom.
Somali piracy is back.
A scourge that emerged more than 30 years ago – and grew into an $18 billion criminal enterprise by the 2010s – had been mostly wiped out. But economic calamity combined with opportunity, particularly from the Iran war, has emboldened Somalia’s pirates to return to the seas in search of multimillion-dollar ransom payments.
