A crew member gave his first account yesterday of stabbing and capturing a Somali pirate leader on board the US-flagged Maersk Alabama during last week’s battle in the Indian Ocean.
A.T.M. “Zahid” Reza told reporters on his return to America that he had captured the pirate, “Abdul”, with Mike Perry, the ship’s chief engineer.
“I was attempting to kill him,” Mr Reza said. “Chief engineer said, ‘No, no, no, don’t. We need him alive.’ ” Mr Reza, from Connecticut, has been praised by shipmates for his bravery during the high-seas drama that ended with US navy snipers shooting dead three pirates holding Captain Richard Phillips hostage in a lifeboat.
When four pirates boarded the container ship off the Somali coast on April 8, most of the 20-man crew hid in safe rooms below decks.
The Bangladeshi-American sailor, who has a degree in political science and once dreamt of a career in film, remained on the bridge with the captain. Once the pirates clambered on board using grappling hooks the crew switched control of the ship from the bridge to the engine room and shut down power to the ship.
“I was thinking what to do. I was thinking how to save my life. I was lost. I was confused. I think captain also confused. I saw his movements,” Mr Reza said. “But captain, I think, all the time was playing with the pirates.” Mr Reza persuaded the pirate leader to go below decks with him, where the other crew members were hiding.
“I convinced him. I told him, ‘Trust me. I am Muslim. You are Muslim. Trust me, Abdul. I am from Bangladesh. You are from Somalia. So we are brothers. Anyhow, I convinced him,” he said. “[The] engine room was dark because ship was shut down.”
Mr Reza, a slight man, said the chief engineer jumped the teenage pirate, and he piled on to help, stabbing the pirate in the hand with an icepick. “I saw the pirate lying on the floor and chief engineer on his back with the knife. He was having \ hard time to control him. I jumped over the pirate and stabbed him and the chief engineer also stabbed him in the back.”
Mr Reza added: “I hold him because chief engineer not strong enough to hold him. I tied his hands. Me and chief engineer Mike Perry tied his hands and tied his legs, then took him our hostage.” The crew negotiated the return of the pirate leader in return for the gang releasing Captain Phillips and leaving the ship in a lifeboat.
However, the pirates took the skipper hostage for five days until he was freed by US Navy Seals on Sunday.
The US warship that rescued Captain Phillips docked in the Kenyan port of Mombasa yesterday where a chartered jet was waiting to carry him back to the US to be reunited with his wife and two children and the Maersk Alabama crew. The other 19 crew touched down yesterday at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.
Miguel Ruiz, one of the crew, said that he had had a conversation with a pirate. “I said to him, ‘Why do you do that?’ ” Mr Ruiz said the pirate responded that “we’ve got 20 million people in Somalia who are poor, that don’t have education. We don’t have no food.”
Source: Times Online
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