Fears grow for sea hijack Americans

Fears are growing for four Americans whose yacht was captured a by pirates in the Indian Ocean off the Somali coast.

Omar Jamal, first secretary at Somalia’s United Nations mission, identified the yacht as the S/V Quest and called for the immediate release of the hostages and all other captives in the hands of the pirates.

Mr Jamal said the hijacking raised “serious concern”, following the 33-year prison sentence given to Somali pirate Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse in New York, who kidnapped and brutalised the captain of a US-flagged merchant ship off the coast of Africa in 2009.

A website chronicling the voyage of a yacht named S/V Quest describes it as being the home of Jean and Scott Adam. The couple have been sailing around the world since December 2004, according to the website.

Earlier, the European Union’s anti-piracy task force said it appeared that Somali pirates had hijacked a separate vessel, the Alfardous, and its eight crew members in the Gulf of Aden. The force said it had no more details about the vessel since it was seized last Sunday.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991 and piracy has flourished off its coast, with pirates earning multi-million ransoms from the hijackings. They were holding 29 ships and about 660 hostages before the latest seizures.

Mr Jamal repeated an appeal to the international community to help curb the ever-increasing acts of piracy.

Meanwhile, Interpol said it would help seven African nations fight piracy off the coast of Somalia. The programme was expected to cost £1.3 million, said Pierre Saint Hilaire, assistant director of the Interpol’s maritime piracy task force.

The first phase of the European Union-funded programme will include Interpol providing Seychelles with a digital fingerprint identification system to make it easier to identify pirates and share information. Other countries to benefit from the 20-month programme are Djibouti, Kenya, Mauritius, Somalia, Tanzania and Yemen.

Kenya and Seychelles have more than 100 Somali pirates in their custody and some of the millions in ransom cash is believed to be invested in Kenya.