Somali pirates are businessmen who know exactly what they are doing. Negotiating the release of a ship is not an easy task – as one Dutch mediator knows firsthand.

They fire the imagination, all those photos and films from the Gulf of Aden. Young men, weapons at the ready, in small boats, pursuing a larger, but defenceless merchant ship. The images instil a romantic kind of reverence - possibly tempered by the grim realisation that piracy is really just thievery and hijacking.

But that is only part of the picture. Hans Slaman, a Dutch mediator who negotiated for a good two months on the release of a hijacked Belgian ship, sees the wider view.

Mr Slaman is very experienced in working with security threats, for the government as well as for his own company which gives advice on how to handle risky situations. This prompted the owners of the Belgian-flagged vessel Pompei to contact him when the ship was hijacked on 18 April by a couple of those young men in one of those small boats.

Don’t call us…
First question: how do you get in touch with pirates? “They call you. You don’t call them,” Mr Slaman answers. They are in control, particularly at the start. Because, as he puts it: “They have something you desperately want back.” In this case, that something was a ship with a crew of ten on board.

“An email was sent to us from the ship stating that we should contact a certain Abdi. He presented himself as an experienced and expert negotiator.” For 68 days, Abdi and Mr Slaman were the only channel of communication between the Belgian owners of the ship and the pirate leaders.

“Abdi made it very clear that he was not entitled to make decisions. He would discuss everything with the clan leaders.” For clarity’s sake: there were only guards on board the Pompei, the lowest ranks of the sea. The bosses stayed on land, and Abdi had to consult with them before he was allowed to resume contact with Mr Slaman.

The opposite was also true: “I could decide how I wanted to put across the ship’s message to Abdi. But, of course, I could never actually change the content of the message.”

A game on three levels
The most important part of a message’s content: figures. To be precise, the amount the pirates demanded for the release of the Pompei (starting at six million US dollars) and the final amount paid (in Mr Slaman’s words, “less than 2.8 million”).

A good two months and 171 telephone conversations are what it took to seal the deal between Mr Slaman and Abdi. A true fight to the finish, as the Dutch negotiator put it. Partly due to the fact that the game was being played on three different levels: by the clan leaders, by the armed young men on board, and by Abdi himself.

“There were moments in which we thought we had reached an agreement but then ‘new problems’ arose. They always were about money. The pirates at sea weren’t satisfied with the amount. It was all just a game. On top of that, Abdi also bargained for his own personal gain. He wanted commission, played two roles…”

But what can we learn from all this? Mr Slaman calls it an “unorthodox business model” but, fact is, Somali pirates are a lean and mean moneymaking machine. Neither the clan leaders nor the negotiators were born yesterday. “They know exactly what they are doing.”

Conversation number 171
So what happened to the Pompei? He won’t disclose the details, but it boils down to a ‘money drop’ which took place on 27 June. Money, sealed in watertight containers, is attached to parachutes and dropped into the sea where it is collected by the pirates who then count the notes.

“You then hear that the money is all there and that they will disembark. Conversation number 171 was our deliverance. The captain rang to tell us the last pirate had left the ship. We could finally breathe a sigh of relief.”

Lead photo: larryzou@ at Flickr