Major Developments Major Developments by Calendar Year

On November 17, 2008, the U.S. Navy announced that Somali pirates had hijacked the Sirius Star, a Saudi-owned supertanker loaded with crude oil. The attack occurred on November 15, approximately 450 miles off the coast of Kenya. It has 25 crew members boarded in the ship and was sailing under a Liberian flag. It is the largest ship that is ever captured by pirates. It is owned by Saudi oil company Aramco. It is 1,080 feet long – nearly equal to the length of an aircraft carrier – so it is considered as one of the largest ships to sail the seas. The capacity of Sirius Star ship is nearly 2 billions barrels of oil. Somali pirates have captured several ships off the Horn of Africa in the past, but the hijacking of a supertanker created sensational news. The pirates are trained fighters, usually dressed in military attire, using speedboats or racing boats provided with satellite phones and GPS equipment. They are mostly armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank rockets launchers and various types of grenades. They collected nearly 300 million dollars in the year 2008 by hijacking ships. The Ship consists of 25-member crew from various nations like Croatia, Britain, Philippines, Poland, and Saudi Arabia. The ship and crew members were released on January 9, 2009 only after paying of $3 million in bribe.