International Maritime Bureau helps Thai navy thwart pirates

International Maritime Bureau helps Thai navy thwart pirates    The International Chamber of Commerce’s International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said it had supplied information to the Royal Thai Navy that enabled the recovery last week of a tug and barge hijacked by pirates.
   Thai maritime authorities arrested seven Myanmar nationals, four of whom are believed to have seized the Indonesian tug “Sing Sing Mariner” and the barge, “Kapuas 68,” off the Indonesian coast Feb. 9. Thai officials boarded the tug and barge in the Gulf of Thailand just as the hijackers were changing the vessels’ names to “Tyson” and “Tyson V.”
   The pirates had left the four crewmen of the tug and barge on a deserted island, where they were rescued by a passing fishing boat.
   The “Kapuas 68” had been loaded with 3,000 metric tons of crude palm oil, valued at $1.6 million.
   In 2003, 12 such tug-and-barge combinations were hijacked by criminal gangs in Southeast Asia, the IMB said in a statement.
   “These tugs and barges are soft targets because they are moving very slowly and are easy to board and take over,” said Capt. Pottengal Mukundan, director of the London-based IMB.