PIRATES OF PUNTLAND
Wednesday 22 Apri, 9pm, on BBC ALBA
The kidnapping of super-tankers hundreds of miles of the coast of Africa by Somali pirates has sent shock waves reverberating around the international community. Who are these pirates, where do they come from and what do they want?
An in-depth investigation titled ‘Soillse – Spuinneadairean Puntland : Pirates of Puntland’, which will be broadcast on BBC ALBA, follows the case of a German couple kidnapped by hostages as well as joining the French Navy at sea, tasked with the impossible job of patrolling the Aden Gulf, an area four times the size of France.
The semi autonomous region of Puntland, Northeast Somalia, has been dubbed ‘Pirateland’. It’s from these shores that the majority of pirate attacks take place, with more than 90 incidents of piracy taking place in 2008, in these coastal waters alone.
Claiming vast ransoms for hostages and ships, today the threat of pirates is so great that this shipping lane has his own police and government, unrecognised by the international community. However, police are impotent in the face of increasingly audacious pirate attacks and last year, only one pirate crew was arrested.
‘Soillse – Spuinneadairean Puntland : Pirates of Puntland’ will be broadcast on BBC ALBA on Wednesday 22 April at 21:00 and is available on Sky channel 168 & Freesat channel 110.