They gave 'em back?

Rico says you can always count on al-Reuters for the news about idiots:

Dutch commandos freed twenty Yemeni hostages on Saturday and briefly detained seven pirates who had forced the Yemenis to sail a "mother ship" attacking vessels in the Gulf of Aden, NATO officials said.
In a separate incident, gunmen from Somalia seized a Belgian-registered ship and its ten crew, including seven Europeans, further south in the Indian Ocean. A pirate source said the vessel, the Pompei, would be taken to the coast. Somali sea gangs have captured dozens of ships, taken hundreds of sailors prisoner, and made off with millions of dollars in ransoms, despite an unprecedented deployment by foreign navies in waters off the Horn of Africa.
NATO Lieutenant Commander Alexandre Fernandes, speaking on board the Portuguese warship Corte-Real, said the twenty fishermen were rescued after a Dutch navy frigate on a NATO patrol responded to an assault on a Greek-owned tanker by pirates firing assault rifles and grenades.
Commandos from the Dutch ship, the De Zeven Provincien, chased the pirates, who were on a small skiff, back to their "mother ship", a hijacked Yemeni fishing dhow.
"We have freed the hostages, we have freed the dhow, and we have seized the weapons... The pirates did not fight and no gunfire was exchanged," Fernandes told Reuters. The Corte-Real is also on a NATO anti-piracy mission. He said the hostages had been held since last week. The commandos briefly detained and questioned the seven gunmen, he told Reuters, but had no legal power to arrest them. "NATO does not have a detainment policy. The warship must follow its national law," he said. "They can only arrest them if the pirates are from the Netherlands, the victims are from the Netherlands, or if they are in Netherlands waters." He said an unexploded rocket-propelled grenade was later found on board the tanker, the Marshall Islands-flagged MT Handytankers Magic, managed by Roxana Shipping SA of Greece.
A Belgian government crisis centre spokesman said fears grew for the Pompei, a dredging vessel, after it put out two alarm signals early on Saturday when it was about 600 km (370 miles) from the Somali coast en route to the Seychelles. Fernandes said the ship was carrying two Belgian, four Croatian, one Dutch, and three Filipino crew members. "A helicopter from EU naval force Operation Atalanta flew over and confirmed the hijacking visually," he told Reuters.
A pirate source who said he was on board the Pompei told Reuters in Mogadishu by satellite phone that the pirates would sail it to a coastal base. "We have hijacked a Belgian ship. We will take it to Haradheere," he said. Regional analysts and security experts say that, without political stability in Somalia, which has been mired in conflict for eighteen years, the pirate gangs will continue to thrive.
On Friday five gunmen in a skiff approached a Danish cargo vessel, the MV Puma, in the Gulf of Aden, prompting US and South Korean warships to send aircraft to the scene. Last week pirates from the lawless Horn of Africa state captured two more ships and fired on two others. A French naval frigate seized eleven gunmen on Wednesday, foiling another attack.
The Somali government plans to present its proposals to combat the sea gangs at a major donors' meeting on Somalia due to take place in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday. It says it needs more money to tackle insecurity on land and to provide jobs for the country's many out-of-work young men.
Most of Somalia's pirate gangs operate from the semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland, where many of them say they first took to the seas to stop illegal fishing by European fleets and the dumping of toxic waste. In a Reuters interview late on Friday, Puntland President Abdirahman Mohamed Farole also blamed ship owners for paying ransoms that encouraged impoverished youths to join the gunmen. "But the root cause of this piracy, as everyone knows, is illegal fishing," Farole said in neighbouring Kenya. "That situation still exists, so any activity directed at eliminating piracy should also be combined with the elimination of illegal fishing by foreign trawlers."

Rico says he apologizes to al-Reuters; the stupidity was Dutch... (Rico says he will now remonstrate with his friend in Holland, who will doubtless agree with him.)

ABC News has a slightly different take on the action:

Somali pirates attacked two ships off the Horn of Africa on Saturday, capturing a Belgian dredger and its crew of ten. NATO forces intervened in the other assault, chasing the pirates down and freeing twenty fisherman on a Yemeni dhow. The high-seas attacks underscored the dangers in waters off Somalia and east Africa, despite the best efforts of an international flotilla that includes warships from the United States and the European Union. Pirates from anarchic, clan-ruled Somalia have attacked more than eighty boats this year and hold sixteen ships and over 290 crew members hostage.
In the first attack, pirates hijacked the Belgian-flagged Pompei in the Indian Ocean, a few hundred miles north of the Seychelles islands, said Portuguese Lieutenant Commander Alexandre Santos Fernandes, who is traveling with the NATO fleet patrolling the region.
Belgium reported that the ship sounded two alarms early Saturday indicating it was under attack on its way to the Seychelles. It had ten crewmen: two Belgians, one Dutch, three Filipinos, and four Croatians.
Hours later, pirates further north in the Gulf of Aden attacked a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker with small arms and rockets. Fernandes said that ship, the Handytankers Magic, issued a distress call shortly after dawn but escaped the pirates using "speed and maneuvers".
A Dutch frigate from the NATO force responded immediately to the distress call. It trailed the pirates "on a small white skiff, which tried to evade and proceed toward a Yemeni-flagged fishing dhow" that had been sized by the pirates a week ago, Fernandes said. He said pirates were using the Yemeni vessel as a "mother ship", a boat that allows the pirates' tiny skiffs to operate far off the Somali coast.
The pirates boarded the dhow and Dutch marine commandos followed soon after, freeing twenty fishermen whose nationalities were not known. There was no exchange of fire, and Dutch forces seized seven Kalashnikov rifles and one rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Seven Somali pirates were detained, but they were soon released because "NATO does not have any detainment policy," Fernandes said. The seven could not be arrested or held because they were seized by Dutch nationals, and neither the pirates, the victims, nor the ship were Dutch, he explained.
The Gulf of Aden— a vital short cut between Europe and Asia— is one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. For that reason, it has been hard hit by pirates, who can earn $1 million or more in ransom for each hijacked vessel.
Pirates plucked from the sea by navy warships could be tried anywhere from Mombasa to New York, Paris to Rotterdam— but most are simply set free to wreak havoc again because of legal issues. Among the difficulties facing prosecutors is assembling witnesses scattered across the globe and finding translators. Many countries are wary of hauling in pirates for trial for fear of being saddled with them after they serve their prison terms.
The United States, the European Union and Britain all have signed agreements with Somalia's southern neighbor, Kenya, clearing the way for a slew of court cases in the southern port city of Mombasa. And the most prominent recent case — a scrawny Somali teenage pirate who stormed the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama this month and was later arrested by the U.S. Navy — will be tried in New York.
French soldiers take pirates who have attacked French citizens to Paris; pirates who have attacked other nations are hauled to Kenya, such as the eleven seized Wednesday when the French navy found them stalking a Lebanese-owned ship. India took two dozen suspects to Yemen, since half were from there. The Dutch took five suspects to Rotterdam, where they probably will be tried next month under a 17th-century law against overzeese diefstal: "sea robbery".
Britain, the United States, Germany, and France have brought suspects to Kenya, which convicted ten pirates arrested by US sailors last year. Each is serving a sentence of seven years— the maximum. But a backlog of all sorts of cases in Kenya's courts could mean long delays in trying the pirates.
AccuWeather.com says weather in the region is likely to favor the pirates for the next several weeks. Very small waves and light winds make it easier for the pirates to operate the small speedboats they use to attack ships. Unrestricted visibility at daybreak will help lookouts on vessels watching for attacks, but little or no moonlight works for the brigands, the weather service said.