MV

Merchant vessel

A merchant vessel is a ship that transports cargo or passengers. The closely related term commercial vessel is defined by the United States Coast Guard as any vessel engaged in commercial trade or that carries passengers for hire...

 Iran Deyanat is an Iranian ship (owned and operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines) that was hijacked in the Gulf of Aden

Gulf of Aden

The Gulf of Aden is located in the Arabian Sea between Yemen, on the south coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and Somalia in the Horn of Africa. In the northwest, it connects with the Red Sea through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, which is about 20 miles wide....

 by 40 pirates

Piracy in Somalia

Piracy off the coast of Somalia has been a threat to international shipping since the second phase of the Somali Civil War in the early 21st century...

 with Kalashnikov

AK-47

The AK-47 is a selective-fire, gas-operated 7.62×39mm assault rifle, first developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov. It is officially known as Avtomat Kalashnikova . It is also known as a Kalashnikov, an "AK", or in Russian slang, Kalash.Design work on the AK-47 began in the last year...

s and RPGs on August 21, 2008. The crew

Crew

A crew is a body or a class of people who work at a common activity, generally in a structured or hierarchical organization. A location in which a crew works is called a crewyard or a workyard...

 of the ship numbered 29: a Pakistani

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 captain

Captain (naval)

Captain is the name most often given in English-speaking navies to the rank corresponding to command of the largest ships. The NATO rank code is OF-5, equivalent to an army full colonel....

, 14 Iranians

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 including an engineer, 3 Indians

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, 2 Filipinos

Filipinos

Filipinos is the brand name for a series of biscuit snacks made by Kraft Foods. In Spain and Portugal they are produced and sold under the Artiach brand name. Under license to United Biscuits, in the Netherlands they are sold and produced locally under the Verkade brand...

, and 10 Eastern Europeans. The ship was freed on October 10, and the crew was unharmed. The ship went underway bound to Oman

Oman

Oman , officially called the Sultanate of Oman , is an Arab state in southwest Asia on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the west, and Yemen to the southwest. The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea on the...

 and then to its final destination at Rotterdam

Rotterdam

Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...

.

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

Eritrea

Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...

; 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

Eyl

Eyl is an ancient town in the northern Puntland region of Somalia. It is situated near the Hafun peninsula.-History:Eyl is the site of many historical artifacts from Somalia's pre-colonial period...

 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 onboard.

Conditions aboard the ship

The sailors aboard the ship were limited to two slices of moldy bread and a ration of two cups of water. Though the pirates took $10,000 from the ship's captain and the crew's cell phones, clothes, and possessions, they were allowed to call home for the first two days after the hijacking. The pirates carried guns at all time and negotiations were conducted "at the officer's level," so most of the crew knew nothing of the pirates' demands.

Ransom

A ransom was set at $2 million, and the Iranian news channel Press TV

Press TV

Press TV is a 24-hour English language global news network owned by the Iranian government. Its headquarters are located in Tehran, Iran, with bureaux in Beirut , Damascus , London , Seoul and Washington DC ....

 said that the United States, believing that the ship may contain uranium, offered $7 million to board and search the ship. (US officials reportedly would not comment.) At one point the Sunday Times

The Sunday Times (South Africa)

The Sunday Times is a popular South African Sunday newspaper. It has an audited circulation of 504,000 and a weekly readership of 3.2 million, making it the largest weekly newspaper in South Africa. Recently it was involved in exposing a corruption scandal involving the South African government's...

 reported that the IRISL paid $200,000 in the first of a series of ransom payments, but the Iranian company denied the claim. The ship "was supposed to be released, but now they are saying the $200,000 was for facilitation only. They want more money for the ransom," said Andrew Mwangura, of the Kenyan-based East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme.

According to Lloyd's List

Lloyd's List

Lloyd's List is one of the world's oldest continuously-running journals, having provided weekly shipping news in London as early as 1734. Now published daily, a recent issue was numbered 59,200...

, the IRISL ultimately paid $2.5 million to free the ship.

Mysterious contents

The IRISL, which owns the ship, has been designated for proliferation activity by the U.S. Treasury office, thereby freezing its assets and banning American trade with it, including food and medical supplies, in accordance with US sanctions of Iran. The US accuses the shipping line of "falsifying documents and using deceptive schemes to shroud its involvement in illicit commerce," saying the "IRISL's actions are part of a broader pattern of deception and fabrication that Iran uses to advance its nuclear and missile programs."

Though the ship carried industrial contents such as iron ore, other potentially illegal cargo has been surmised by the blog Long War Journal

Public Multimedia

The Long War Journal is an American news website, also described as a blog, which reports on the war on terror. The site is operated by Public Multimedia Incorporated , a non-profit media organization established in 2007. PMI is run by Paul Hanusz and Bill Roggio...

. According to Long War Journal (which as sources for its reports includes "Somali officials," "independent sources," and chiefly a man named Hassan Allore Osman, listed as Puntland

Puntland

Puntland , officially the Puntland State of Somalia , is a region in northeastern Somalia, centered on Garowe in the Nugaal province. Its leaders declared the territory an autonomous state in 1998....

's Minister of Minerals and Oil), some of the pirates who boarded the ship suffered a strange illness, which includes loss of hair and skin burns, and some pirates having died. The pirates tried to access the cargo on the ship, but the containers were locked and the captain and Iranian engineer from the ship's crew gave changing accounts of the cargo's contents. "That ship is unusual," the Long War Journal reports Osman as saying. "It is not carrying a normal shipment."

In addition, Director of the East African's Seafarer's Assistance Programme Andrew Mwangura told South Africa's Sunday Times

The Sunday Times (South Africa)

The Sunday Times is a popular South African Sunday newspaper. It has an audited circulation of 504,000 and a weekly readership of 3.2 million, making it the largest weekly newspaper in South Africa. Recently it was involved in exposing a corruption scandal involving the South African government's...

: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship." Mwangura, however, did not name the source of his information, so it is not known whether he was referring to the Long War Journal reports.

Experts have said that the accounts of the illness sound more like radiation poisoning than chemical poisoning. "It's baffling," Jonathan Tucker, from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said to Fox News. "I'm not aware of any chemical agent that produces loss of hair within a few days. That's more suggestive of high levels of radioactive waste."

In all, 16 pirates died from the ship's contents. Differing analyses have claimed that the ship's contents were planned to be delivered to Hezbollah or to al-Qaida groups in the Horn of Africa

Horn of Africa

The Horn of Africa is a peninsula in East Africa that juts hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian Sea and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. It is the easternmost projection of the African continent...

; ultimately, however, the ship berthed at the destination listed on its manifest, Rotterdam, unloading food and minerals.

It has been speculated that the ship's actual destination was Eritrea

Eritrea

Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...

, and that its cargo was small arms and chemical weapons for Islamist anti-government rebels in Somalia. It has also been speculated that the ship was loaded with radioactive sand, which was to be released in the proximity of Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i coastal cities, and blown ashore by the wind. Surviving Somali pirates said that the containers that had been broken open were filled with a "powdery fine sandy soil".

Docking

The MV Iran Deyanat arrived at Rotterdam on 11 November 2008. A "multi-disciplinary team comprising inspectors from the port authority, customs and habour police boarded and searched the ship" and found no hazardous substances on board. The paperwork was in order and the ship was unloaded. Lloyd's List reported that the ship’s charterer—German-based Hinrichs—denied any evidence of pirates falling ill during the hijacking. This contradicts the claims, however, that local officials made to sources such as The Times of South Africa

The Sunday Times (South Africa)

The Sunday Times is a popular South African Sunday newspaper. It has an audited circulation of 504,000 and a weekly readership of 3.2 million, making it the largest weekly newspaper in South Africa. Recently it was involved in exposing a corruption scandal involving the South African government's...

 and Reuters

Reuters

Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...

.