He said “white people” had attacked Somalia by trawling its coral reefs and dumping poison on its shores. ![]() He preferred to keep his face wrapped in a keffiyeh and declared himself to be at war with forces of the west. As guests of Gerlach and his Sa’ad clan, we interviewed a boss who called himself Mustaf Mohammed Sheikh. We heard it in Hobyo, a pirate nest on the eastern coast where we travelled with a long convoy of guards. ![]() When we arrived in Somalia, we found this fishing story in common circulation. The notion of Somali pirates as frustrated fishermen was a cliche, but it seemed to work in court, where little could be verified about the men. He had also guided a German TV correspondent through the same region about eight months before.ĭuring the trial in Hamburg, some of the public defenders had insisted their clients were poor, simple, press-ganged fishermen. Gerlach had good relationships with the dominant Sa’ad clan elders in the region. Gerlach had lived much of his adult life in Germany, but he came from Galkacyo, which had become a latter-day pirate supply town. We had arranged security through Mohammed Sahal Gerlach, a Somali elder, in Berlin. I travelled with Ashwin Raman, a Indian-born film-maker, whose documentaries about Afghanistan and Somalia had won several awards. I had reported on the case for Spiegel Online, where I worked in Berlin, and it seemed to me that a book about the case and some underreported aspects of Somali piracy might be interesting. Their marathon trial represented the first proceeding on German soil against any pirate, Somali or otherwise, in more than four centuries. They had been captured two years earlier when they tried to hijack the MV Taipan, a German cargo ship, near Somalia. ![]() I flew to Somalia in early 2012 to write about a pirate gang jailed in Hamburg. “Why no money?” he asked, referring to the ransom the pirates had demanded. “If the Americans come, you will be killed.” I had just been wondering how many of the guards I could shoot before they shot me. He rested it behind him and munched a stem of khat, a leafy green plant that acts as a stimulant.
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