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Basque trawler from Bermeo (Biscay) Alakrana was hijacked by Somali pirates on October 2nd, 2009, in international waters of the Indian Ocean. A month before, the ship managed to escape from another hijacking attempt.

After 47 days of pain and insecurity, the 36 members of the crew, 7 of them Basques, have been freed in the second hijacking of a Basque boat after the Playa de Bakio was seized in April 2008. In that case, the ship and its crew were released after 6 days in the hands of the pirates.

The crew of the Alakrana is composed of 7 Basque seamen, 9 Galician, 2 Malaysian, 3 Senegalese, 4 from Ghana, 2 from Ivory Coast , 1 from Seychelles and 8 Indonesian.

After a first sign of alert, two aircrafts from Luxembourg confirmed the presence of armed pirates aboard the Alakrana on October 2nd, so the Spanish government created a crisis committee.

The tuna was seized 350 miles off the coast of Somalia, in international waters and outside the security perimeter Atalanta, launched in early 2009 by the European Union to fight piracy off the Somali coast, according to the Ministry of Defence.

Before the assault, the crew of the tuna boat had 7 minutes to talk with other ships and to sound the alarm. The pirates moved the ship to shore and allowed the crew to call the shipowner "at least once a day." At the beginning, the Spanish government said it would not pay any ransom to the pirates.

Controversy over the arrest of two pirates

Two days after the hijacking, two suspected pirates were captured by the Spanish frigate Canarias as they navigated a small boat in the vicinity of the Alakrana. Judge of the Spanish High Court Baltasar Garzón opened legal proceedings against those arrested for crimes of hijacking and piracy.

On October 5th, Garzón issued the imprisonment of those two pirates (Abdu Willy and Raagegeesey) and ordered that both were transferred to Spain "urgently". They were accused of 36 crimes for false arrest, one count for illegal assembly and another one for robbery with violence and weapons use.

The hijackers of the Alakrana said then they would not release the trawler unless the detainees were sent back to Somalia. For the Alakrana skipper Ricardo Blach, the situation was simple: "If the arrested pirates came back to Somalia, everything would be fixed, that''s what they want," he told Basque public radio station.

More complications

After 35 days of hijacking, the pirates holding the Basque trawler off Somalia took three crew members ashore to press Spanish authorities for the release of fellow pirates captured in connection with the month-old hostage drama.

The pirates were pressing for the release of their two colleagues captured by Spanish naval forces a day after the hijacking and eventually brought to Madrid, Spain, to face charges.

The families of the fishermen met Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to ask him to extradite the two Somali pirates who were jailed in Spain to Somalia. The Spanish government has been working to find some sort of legal formula that would allow it to try them and send them back to their country quickly in hopes of appeasing the pirates who remained in control of the trawler.

In the end, the hostages were released with the two Somali suspects still in custody in Madrid. They were formally charged with kidnapping and related charges on Monday, October 16th.