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Jun 06, 2016 News
The scourge of modern-day piracy has claimed the lives of at least 14 fishermen in the past two years and five months, and some of the victims have never been found.
This is according to statistics acquired by Kaieteur News for June 11, 2013 and May 27, 2016.
Eight pirate attacks were reported during this period, with deaths occurring in five. Six attacks occurred in the Corentyne River, with three happening in Surinamese territory. Most of the victims are from the Corentyne.
And it seems as if the preferred way of disposing of their victims is to tie them up and toss them overboard.
On June 11, 2013, five fishermen were in Surinamese waters when pirates attacked them.
Nazim Shakim, 28, and Cyril Ali, 45, were reportedly tortured before being ordered to jump overboard.
The other three crewmen, Lakeram Richard, 18, of Number 67 Village, Corentyne; Anthony Joseph Balram, 19, of Number 54 Village and Samuel Hatton, 34, of Annandale, East Coast Demerara were reportedly also thrown overboard with their hands bound but managed to free themselves.
Pirates went on another deadly rampage in the Corentyne River on October, 2013, attacking two vessels, the Tara 1 and the Omi 5, and killing fishermen Rajin Ramsammy, Rakesh Persaud, Karran Singh, and Eon Benn. The victims were reportedly tied and tossed overboard.
One of the captains was reportedly taken hostage by the pirates but was eventually rescued at a location known as Red Light in Suriname. In all, six other crewmen were rescued.
In the double attack, the pirates stole a 48-Horsepower Yamaha outboard engine valued at $800,000, a fishing boat worth $700,000 and a quantity of fish valued $144,900.
The captain of the Tara 1 alleged that at least three armed and masked men clambered onto the vessel 1 and started to broadside them with cutlasses.
The pirates reportedly manned the Tara 1 and used it to attack the Omi5.
The killings continued on July 8, 2014. Feroze Hack, the captain of a fishing vessel, reportedly told Surinamese authorities that Hack told Surinamese detectives that he and his crew were sailing when another vessel slammed into their boat and four men attacked them.
The captain had also claimed that after stripping their vessel, the pirates transferred them to their boat and then kicked them overboard.
He alleged that he managed to untie his hands, so by the time he was in the water, his hands were free.
Kaieteur News understands that the captain told police officers in Suriname that after he was separated from his crew members, he swam to a mud-flat and fell asleep.
On awaking later, he reportedly stopped a passing boat.
Four days after the attack was reported, the boat was discovered in Mahaica, East Coast Demerara.
The body of 40-year-old Andrew Gopie of Lusignan, East Coast Demerara, was found shortly after on the Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara foreshore.
The bodies of Vinesh Drunarine of Uitvlugt, West Coast Demerara; Raymond Gomes, and Chandrapaul Jallim of Recht-Door-Zee, West Bank Demerara, were never found.
And just—days ago, a gang, allegedly comprising fishermen, attacked five crewmen of the fishing vessel, the “Rosanna 66, in Surinamese waters.
The victims were all thrown overboard, with three of the victims being reportedly tied to an anchor before being tossed from their vessel, the Rosanna 664.
Only the body of Hemchand Sukdeo, 46, was recovered from a seine hours after the attack.
A postmortem indicated cause of death as blunt trauma to the head and asphyxia due to drowning.
Still missing are Dochand Sukra aka ‘Bucher”, 54, of No. 55 Village, Munesh Churram, aka “Boyo”, 26, of No. 60 Village. Churram is a father of two aged two years and five months. Dhanpaul Rampaul a father of one of No. 67 Village, Corentyne and Dochand Sukra aka ‘Bucher”, 54, of No. 55 Village, Corentyne were the other victims.
Boat captain Seepersaud Persaud, who was also thrown overboard, miraculously managed to survive the ordeal by drifting for hours until he was rescued by another boat.
It was the captain who gave investigators a description of the boat which allegedly attacked the crew.
Five suspects, all fishermen, were subsequently arrested and charged with Sukdeo’s murder.
The pirates who are all fishermen are Ramchan Latchman, 23, married and a father of two of No. 65 Village, Corentyne; Ganesh Naidoo, 41, of No. 71 Village; Ramesh Singh, 53, of Liverpool Village, a father of two, Stephen Leon Leacock 19 of 366, No. 77 Village and Leon Sammy, 29, married and father of one of Lot 1 No. 75 Village, all of Corentyne, Berbice.
In 2009, Kaieteur News had reported that pirates, gunmen linked to the drug and smuggling trade and rogue soldiers are believed to have murdered at least 17 people at sea in 23 months.
Pirates were blamed for the majority of these deaths, members of the army for one, and gunmen linked to drugs and other illicit transactions are believed to have carried out nine of the killings.
Three other deaths may have been caused by a collision, but they may also be cleverly-concealed murders.
The article noted that the killers have not been discouraged by the July 2008 introduction of the Hijacking and Piracy Bill that prescribes the death penalty.
On October 12, 2007, a fishing trawler, the Captain Jewel, with its six-man crew, departed from the Meadow Bank wharf, with the intention of fishing between Guyana and Suriname.
But after setting sail, the vessel and crew disappeared.
In late October, the decomposed bodies of three of the crew were found in the Corentyne River.
It was clear that they had been murdered, since two of the dead men were bound hand and foot.
The victims were identified as Patrick Parboo, 20, the captain, Mahendra Gangadin, called ‘Bready’ of Annandale Sand Reef, both of East Coast Demerara and 29-year-old Mark Sylvester Persram, called ‘Buddy’ of Good Hope, East Coast Demerara.
Still missing are the captain’s 20-year-old brother, Navinda Gangadin, called ‘Dar’; Davindra Persaud, 21, and Christopher Rooplall, 20.
The ill-fated Captain Jewel has never been found.
“Nobody remembers us,” lamented Serojnie Rooplall, whose eldest son, Christopher Rooplall, is among the missing.
“Everybody just abandon us…even the government. They were giving us Public Assistance and then they cut it out, just like that.
“I’m not getting justice and I am finding it difficult to cope.”
Several suspected pirates were subsequently arrested and charged in Suriname following a rash of attacks on fishing vessels in the Corentyne.
But the killings did not stop.
In December 2007, the bodies of three Guyanese men, Paul Da Silva, Rudolph Da Silva and Junior Gomez, were found in Suriname after they had left for a trip to Venezuela, where they had operated a passenger boat service earlier that month.
The killers were never identified.
But in March, 2009, the bullet-riddled bodies of Romeo De Agrella, 41, and his son, Clint De Agrella, 21, of Grant Hope, Pomeroon, were found at Shell Beach in the Barima-Waini Region.
Their boat, which also bore bullet holes, was also found but the vessel’s 250 horsepower engine was missing.
The two men were reportedly slain while heading home from a trip to Venezuela.
Romeo De Agrella was the uncle of Rudolph Da Silva, one of the three men who turned up dead in Suriname waters in 2007.
According to local police officials, the killings were believed to be drug-related.
Police charged Jerome Parkes, a 24-year-old dredge owner of the Lower Pomeroon, and Tyrone Da Silva and Lloyd Roberts with the murder of the De Agrellas. They were subsequently freed.
In June, 2009, Fazal Hoosain, a businessman from Number 69 Village, Corentyne, was travelling with other passengers in a Suriname ‘back-track’ vessel when a five masked men with rifles and handguns approached.
After firing warning shots to force the passenger boat to stop, some of the gunmen boarded the boat, disabled its engine and relieved the passengers of their cell phones.
They then forced Hoosain, who was reportedly carrying millions in cash, to accompany them in their boat.
Hours later, the crew of a fishing vessel found Hoosain’s bound and battered body in the Corentyne River.
Police detained three men for Hoosain’s murder, but they were never charged.
But two of the most disturbing cases occurred last August.
On August 11, 2009, Jainarine Dinanauth, his 10-year-old son Ricky, and boat captain Henry Gibson were heading to Hog Island when their boat was reportedly struck by another vessel.
Dinanauth and Gibson’s bodies were found drifting in the damaged boat just off the eastern side of Hog Island.
However, ten-year-old Ricky Dinanauth’s body has not been found.
There is suspicion that their vessel was rammed by a Coast Guard vessel. Green paint that was suspected to have come from a Coast Guard vessel of similar colour was also found on the wreck.
That suspicion escalated when three Coast Guard ranks were implicated in the abduction and murder of 24-year-old Bartica resident Dweive Kant Ramdass.
On August 20, Ramdass, who was employed with a gold and diamond buyer, was travelling to Bartica with $17M in cash for his employer when the ranks allegedly took him off the vessel in the vicinity of the Parika Stelling.
After relieving their victim of the cash, the Coast Guard ranks allegedly killed Ramdass and dumped him in the Bonasika Creek. The ranks were subsequently convicted.
The Guyana Defence Force subsequently mounted an investigation into the possible involvement of Coast Guard ranks and the Hog Island crash.
However, the army later stated that its findings were inconclusive.
Then, two Saturdays ago, a trawler, the Island Princess, disappeared with its four-member crew while it was reportedly near Parika.
Police said that a body, believed to be that of 46-year-old Herstelling resident Rickford Bannister, was found between Anaa Regina and Suddie, Essequibo.
The discovery came after the bullet-riddled and degutted body of trawler captain Titus Buckley Nascimento, 46, was found at Zeelandia, Wakenaam seashore.
The next day, the body of 25-year-old engineer Mahendra Singh was found on the Hamburg Island seashore.
Still missing and also feared dead is 23-year-old Ryan Chin of Lot 39 Friar’s Rust, Linden.
In 2013, Chairman of the Upper Corentyne Fishermen’s Co-op Society and Berbice Anti-Piracy Squad, Pravinchandra Deodat had alleged that the Judiciary was not enforcing the Piracy Act. Deodat had also accused the police of not dealing appropriately with pirate attacks and of not sharing information with the Fishermen’s Co-op.
In response, the Force’s Public Relations Officer, Ivelaw Whittaker, had stated that the Force had investigated 30 piracy reports over the past five years, from which 23 cases were placed before the courts.
Whittaker also said that in many instances, fishermen living in and operating in Berbice have been implicated and charged, including a sibling of the Chairman of the No. 66 Fishermen’s Co-op Society.
“Given the fact that fisherfolk from Berbice are involved in these acts of piracy, the police have some reservations concerning the sharing of information on their operations/strategies,” he said.
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