Raw Video: Inside a Pirate Assault

Last month, pirates assaulted the Liberty Sun, a U.S.-flagged merchant ship carrying food aid to Kenya. The ship managed to evade the attackers, but it was raked with rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire.

In Senate testimony yesterday, Philip Shapiro, the president and CEO of Liberty Maritime, the owner of the Liberty Sun, made a plea for Congress to change laws so private shipping companies could arm themselves. Recent pirate attacks, he said, were a “game changer.” And he said the government needed to provide onboard security teams in high-threat shipping lanes while the laws are being changed.

“Private industry cannot switch from a no-firearms regime to an armed protection regime overnight,” he said. “Our ships need protection now — not six or nine months from now.”

The company also released dramatic video footage of the attack (see above). As a pirate speedboat races past, a crew member shouts: “They hit my room, man! Blew up my bed.” The video then shows the crew frantically executing a series of evasive maneuvers.


Careful study of the Liberty Sun incident may, in fact, help shipping companies understand what defenses work best against pirates. In a separate Senate hearing yesterday, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy and Vice Adm. James Winnefeld, director for strategic plans and policy on the Joint Staff, presented some interesting statistics on thwarting pirate attacks. Of unsuccessful pirate attacks, they noted, “a full 78 percent were thwarted simply by effective action taken by the crews of the ships under attack.” In other words, waiting for a naval vessel to intervene is probably not the best option.

Flournoy and Winnefeld did say the Pentagon was currently studying the feasibility of employing of private security teams on commercial vessels. But they also outlined the “passive” security measures they described as being the most effective. Those include comprehensive security planning and risk assessment; removing external ladders; posting lookouts; limiting lighting; installing rigging barriers; varying routes; and building crew “safe rooms.”
Wired