SPAIN has ruled out freeing two captured pirates as demanded by fellow brigands holding a Spanish trawler and 33 crew members off Somalia and reportedly threatening to start killing hostages.
Deputy defence minister Constantino Mendez said yesterday the two Somali men were captured and brought to Madrid because of their alleged role in the hijacking of a Spanish-flagged vessel – the tuna boat Alakrana – on 2 October in the Indian Ocean.
Referring to the imprisoned pirates, he told Spanish National Radio: "The situation is not negotiable."
However, he seemed to leave open a possibility of transferring them to the court system of another country, as Spain did in a similar case in May.
Pirates holding the Alakrana took three crew members ashore to Somalia on Thursday, the defence ministry said.
The wives of two crew members who spoke to their husbands said the pirates are demanding the release of the two in custody in Madrid as a condition for letting the ship and its crew go.
On Thursday night, Alakrana skipper Ricardo Blach told Spanish television the heavily armed pirates had threatened to kill the three crew members taken ashore if there was no progress in freeing the two men.
"They told us if there is no movement relating to those who are in Spain, they would begin by killing those three in three days' time, and then they would take another three, and so on," Mr Blach said.
He said about 30 pirates on the Alakrana took drugs, often quarrelled among themselves and were equipped with machine guns, bazookas, grenade launchers and handguns. "If you say anything to them, they put a pistol to your forehead," he said.
The three taken ashore were Spanish, he said. All told, the crew includes 16 Spaniards, eight Indonesians and others from Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Senegal and the Seychelles.
Mr Mendez ruled out freeing the two and said Spanish forces would arrest the other pirates if possible.
But when asked if the two in custody in Madrid might be transferred to an African country, similar to a case in May, he appeared to suggest that was an option.
