MARBELLA CLUB

An alleged member of the Camorra mafia based in Naples, 55 year old Mario Santafede, was arrested in Barcelona in a joint operation between Spanish and Italian police.
The man has been hiding in Spain for some years and has allegedly been directing drug running operations from Latin America from here. Cocaine runs from Colombia and Ecuador have been at the centre of his operations.He has now been handed over to the National Court in Madrid where he will appear shortly, probably facing extradition to Italy where he is on the list of the country’s most-wanted.Mario Santafede member of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia detained in the car park of a luxury apartment in the northeastern city of Barcelona

A mafia suspect on the list of 100 most wanted fugitives in Italy has been arrested in Barcelona, Italian police said today.

Mario Santafede, 55, a member of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, was picked up in a joint raid carried out by Italian and Spanish police on a flat in a residential area of the city.Santafede, who is the object of an international arrest warrant, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in his absence for criminal association in connection with drug trafficking. He has been on the run since 2004.Spanish police working in cooperation with their Italian counterparts have arrested a suspected leader of Italy’s Camorra crime syndicate, the Interior Ministry said Saturday.Members of Spain’s elite special operations police moved in to detain Mario Santafede in the car park of a luxury apartment in the northeastern city of Barcelona on Friday evening, the ministry said in a statement.Santafede, 55, is wanted by Italian authorities for suspected cocaine smuggling from Colombia and Ecuador to the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Italy, the ministry said.
The suspect, who is thought by investigators to have close links with other Naples-based criminals, is also wanted in connection with at least three murders, the ministry said.Santafede, who was in possession of false Italian and British identity papers when arrested, had changed his appearance through exercise, the ministry said.
The suspect was expected to appear before a judge at the National Court in Madrid later Saturday prior to possible extradition to Italy, the ministry said.
Santafede is one several suspected Camorra leaders arrested in or near Barcelona in recent years. Police arrested Patrizio Bosti, who was on Italy’s list of 30 most-wanted criminals, while having dinner in Girona last month. Bosti, 49, had been on the run since 2005.
In February 2006, Raffaele Petrazzuolo was picked up in Barcelona and deported to Italy on suspicion of criminal activity and complicity with mob leaders.Also in 2006 a man identified only as Carmine R., 38, was detained in the seaside resort of Sitges, just outside Barcelona.

Mercantile Court number one in Madrid has ordered Ryanair not to cancel any reservations made on its flights via the Spanish travel portal Rumbo.The airline had last August insisted that reservations be made only via their own website and not through travel portals, threatening to cancel any reservations made elsewhere without notice. Now however the court has ordered the company to remove that clause from their website and to honour such bookings.

GANGWAR has broken out between Britain's most powerful cocaine gangs in the Spanish Costas.A club security boss was shot five times in a bungled hit in the millionaires' paradise of Marbella this week as coke barons wrestle for control of the UK's £2billion-a-year trade.Last month a known contract killer was murdered in Spain while an Irish hitman was stabbed in the shoulder.In the latest attack, the security boss from Liverpool was blasted in the face, arms and pelvis by a man who is also thought to be from Merseyside.He remains in a serious condition in intensive care. The bloodbath follows the murder of Britain's top drugs trafficker, Colin "Smigger" Smith in Liverpool last November. Underworld sources say he was shot on the orders of two former associates, one known as the Bird of Prey. The pair are now trying to take control of his empire, which he ran out of the resort of Puerto Banus in Marbella.In the past month, gangsters loyal to Smith have sought revenge.
They include a shadowy group of former IRA hitmen known as The Cleaners.But before they could strike one of their gunmen was killed said to be by the Bird of Prey.

Kelly-Anne Corcoran was subjected to violence from her husband, Dermot McArdle, but stayed because she loved him, said Caroline Moran, Kelly-Anne's sister. She said there were "signs of violence" in the relationship and McArdle was aggressive with Kelly-Anne. Caroline Moran said that he sometimes pulled her hair and hit her.
"Kelly-Anne always obeyed him, she did it for a quiet life," Ms Moran said. "She loved Dermot, she was prepared to take it." McArdle denies throwing his wife of five years from the balcony of their Spanish hotel room on February 11, 2000. In an emotional address, Caroline Moran told the court of an incident after her sister's death when she was shopping with a friend in Drogheda and they picked up the accused's children in the car. While they were driving and talking, she said: "Mark [the couple's son] got very distressed and annoyed in himself and then Mark said: 'Daddy is a bold boy, Daddy hit Mammy and pushed Mammy down'.
"I didn't know what to think, I didn't know what happened," Ms Moran said. "I still don't know what happened, eight years later. I want justice for Kelly-Anne, I want to know what happened to her, why she came to Spain on a holiday and never came home." She also said her family had to "fight and plead" with McArdle to be allowed see Kelly-Anne in the coffin. Asked about the defendant's attitude after his wife's death, she said: "I never seen him cry, he showed no emotion, no feelings, no love towards Kelly-Anne." Ms Moran said at the funeral, she put her hand on her sister's head in the coffin and the accused came over and said: "get your effing hand off her head". She said when the accused gave her a prayer to say at the mass, he told her: "If you are going to cry, don't do it, I'll get someone else." In cross-examination, she said the couple were "very tight for money" as they were building a new house. Brigid Lowndes, another sister, told the court Kelly-Anne came to her house one night after a row with the defendant. She showed up in her nightdress, a jacket and no shoes. Ms Lowndes said at the funeral, she was putting a card into the coffin in memory of her other sister Kathy who died in a car accident, when the accused asked her: "what the f**k are you doing?" One night when they met, the accused told Ms Lowndes he was buying a new BMW. "I said why and he said it's what Kelly-Anne would have wanted," she told the court. She said McArdle was "drinking and partying" at the funeral and showed no emotion. Maria Nolan, a friend of Kelly-Anne, said she thought the accused had been "very domineering". Asked if Kelly-Anne ever displayed suicidal behaviour, she said: "absolutely not". She was shocked the accused became "so involved with a new car" after his wife's death. Peter Moran, Kelly-Anne's brother-in-law, said at the hospital in Malaga the accused told him that, "Kelly-Anne did not mean it and that she threw herself over the balcony."
When the couple's child Mark said, "Daddy pushed Mammy," Mr Moran "was confused" and "didn't know whether Dermot was right and the child had misunderstood.
"I phoned Dermot McArdle a couple of weeks later and asked him to explain it to the family. He said to me I am not f**king telling those people, he said you tell them," Mr Moran said. Earlier the court had heard dramatic evidence as five words, uttered by a child hung in the air: "Daddy bold, Daddy pushed Mammy." A hushed Spanish court heard that Mark McArdle, aged just four at the time, spoke these words days after his mother Kelly-Anne's fatal plunge from a Costa del Sol hotel balcony. Members of the Corcoran family and their friends also described the accused as "aggressive" towards his wife during their marriage and unemotional after her death. They alleged he at first said Kelly-Anne "threw herself" off the balcony, then gave different versions of what happened on the night of her fall. McArdle, of Haggardstown, Dundalk, denies murdering his wife Kelly-Anne (28) at the four-star Don Pepe hotel in Marbella, insisting it was an accident. She was rushed to hospital after the horrific plunge but died the following day

Spanish branch of the Latin Kings was launched in 2000 by the young Ecuadorian Eric Velastegui, known as King Wolverine, who is now serving a prison sentence for rape.
US leaders of the Latin Kings visiting Spain, however, have downplayed the group's violent reputation, and evidence from the north-eastern region of Catalonia suggests that such gangs have the potential of being transformed into constructive social forces. The Latin Kings' big rival in Spain are the Netas, a gang founded in the prisons of Puerto Rico in the 1970s. Other gangs include Dominican Don't Play (DDP), many of whose members come from the Dominican Republic. The Madrid DDP has begun to sell drugs and acquired firearms, the daily El Pais reported. Recently, evidence has even emerged of the presence in Catalonia of the Mara Salvatrucha and the Mara 18, Central American groups known for their extreme violence. In the Madrid region alone, the number of gang members tripled in three years to about 1,300 by 2007, police estimated. Nearly 300 of them were regarded as violent. The main gangs, which are present in several cities across Spain, are hierarchically structured, tribe-like organizations. They are characterized by mystical symbols, an ethos of religiosity and machoism, and an ideology of defending the Latin American identity against an environment perceived as racist and hostile. The Latin Kings, for instance, wear rap-style clothes and black-and-gold bead necklaces. Their symbol of a five-point crown represents respect, honesty, unity, knowledge and love.
The gangs tend to place women in a secondary role, with the Latin Kings as the only one to have a female section. Many of the gangs have a double nature, with leisure activities such as football alternating with robberies or extortion which new members can be ordered to commit as a kind of initiation rite. Dozens of gang members have been detained on charges ranging from kidnappings and threats to attacks and killings. Most of the violence takes place between rival gangs, but former members have also told courts about the beatings faced by those who break the internal rules. "We were told to pay 1,200 euros (1,700 dollars), or we'd be burned alive," two girls who had tried to leave the Latin Kings told a Madrid judge.
The growth of the gangs is based on the rapid increase of Latin American immigration to Spain. The overall number of immigrants has soared from 1.8 per cent of the Spanish population in 1990 to more than 10 per cent. The largest groups include 420,000 Ecuadorians and 260,000 Colombians. "Immigrants never see their children, because they work 23 hours a day. The kids are on the street, in search of a (new) family," King Mission, a US representative of the Latin Kings, explained during a visit to Spain. Gangs like the Latin Kings also give a sense of purpose and self-esteem to youths who may come from neighbourhoods riddled with gang violence in their own countries, grew up without their parents who emigrated before them, and who are now struggling with the difficulties of adapting to a foreign culture.
In 2007, Latin street gangs did not commit any killings in Spain for the first time in several years. The decline was attributed to police crackdowns and, in some regions, to attempts to integrate the gangs into Spanish society.
While the conservative Madrid authorities outlawed the Latin Kings in 2007, liberal Catalonia took the opposite approach, giving them the status of a cultural association. Representatives of the Latin Kings and Netas even visited the regional parliament, explaining to legislators that they were planning to make joint musical recordings to bury their hostilities. International experts on street gangs have hailed Catalonia's ground-breaking approach, but it has not entirely eradicated inter-gang violence.

The condition of the British man, Marvin Herbert who was shot five times in the street in Puerto Banús on September 24 last week, is making progress in hospital according to sources at the Costa del Sol Hospital in Marbella.
Marvin Herbert is thought to have been the victim of a drug related settling of scores. He underwent surgery for the second time on Friday after being shot in his right eye, right leg, right arm, pelvis and genitals.Government sub-delegate, Hilario López Luna, says it’s thought the shooting was a drug related settling of scores. Police have already searched the victim’s home in Cancelada and say they will question him when he is released from hospital.The shooter, described as being young with a strong complexion, is still at large.Meanwhile the alleged shooter at an incident in the Nikki Club discotec has declared in court and been sent to prison on remand. He is also British and in his 30’s.

court in Torrevieja has imprisoned three out of four people arrested for drug dealing on the Costa Blanca and Costa Calida .
One of the men is a police officer from San Miguel de Salinas . The group distributed the drugs to nightspots across the coast and the National Police described the haul as like a drugs supermarket .They also found all of the things needed for the preparation of the narcotics before sale , including acetone , gas , precision tools and a pill making machine .
All of this was found at the homes of the suspects in Los Montesinos .

Ray Hegarty who laid carpets for Tony Blair, the Queen Mother and George W Bush has been charged with smuggling £4million of drugs. Ray Hegarty enjoyed mugs of tea with the Prime Minister when he refurbished No10 three years ago. ASJ Carpet Planners, based in Mitcham, south London, have employed the 47-year-old for 30 years. He was arrested by Customs officers at Dover a year ago behind the wheel of a truck he had driven from Spain. They have accused him of having 2.5 tons of cannabis hidden inside. He was released on bail but has been charged with importing drugs and will go on trial in March.

Briton was being held on Spain's Costa del Sol yesterday accused of spraying a disco with gunfire. The man in his 30s, who has not been named, was remanded in custody by a judge in Marbella. He is alleged to have fired during a pitched battle at the crowded Nikki Beach club last month in which a man was shot in the leg.

Johannes Cornelis Smeding, 50, was detained on Thursday afternoon in the seaside resort of Pattaya, which is notorious for crime and prostitution.
He and 38 other Dutch and Norwegian suspects are alleged to have smuggled 300 kilograms of marijuana and other drugs into Norway in Apr 2006. So far 26 alleged members of the gang have been arrested. 'He will be extradited to Norway soon as he faces no charges in Thailand,' Colonel Manad Sriwongsa, of Thai immigration police, said. Col. Manad said Smeding had entered Thailand soon after fleeing Norway in 2006. He married a Thai woman and had set up a bar business in Pattaya

Bhamian Gayle, 23, of Ferndale Road, South Norwood, shot 32-year-old Sarah Johnson as she spoke with intended target Jermaine Broughton – a DJ known as Hurricane Jermaine.
Miss Johnson was hit by three bullets to her chest, arm and buttock but has since recovered.The Old Bailey heard Gayle told Mr Broughton he was a "dead man" at a soccer tournament the day before the August 27 shooting last year. Gayle and accomplice Robert Tate, 25, went looking for Mr Broughton at Virgo's nightclub on the Old Kent Road, where Gayle shot Miss Johnson by mistake.
The pair escaped, but three days later tried to find Broughton at another nightclub. They were arrested following a tip-off the next day.
The pair were convicted of attempted murder and possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life on Monday. Gayle was also convicted of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.A sentencing date has not yet been set.

Marvin Herbert, head of security for a beachfront bar in the millionaires’ marina playground of Puerto Banus.In his mid-30s, he is said to have spent several hours drinking coffee alone on the terrace of Solly’s Diner in Puerto Banus on Wednesday.
He was joined by a second man, also thought to be British, at around 7.30pm. The pair were talking before the attacker pulled a gun from his pocket and shot Herbert five times as he walked towards his blue BMW across the road.Despite being shot in the eye, twice in the crotch, once in the arm and once in the leg, he survived.
He is said to be in a serious condition in a Spanish hospital.His attacker calmly walked away and got into a waiting vehicle which sped off.Hilario Lopez, the Spanish Interior Ministry’s representative in Malaga, said the victim had a criminal record in Britain and the shooting was believed to be related to drug trafficking.sources suggest the attack could have been a revenge attack for the shooting of another Liverpool man in Marbella last month.Spanish police are investigating links to two other shootings of Irish gangsters believed to be linked to drugs disputes.Several other tit-for-tat shootings have taken place in the resorts in recent months.
One witness told Puerto Banus’s local daily newspaper Sur: “We thought it was a firework going off until we saw the man lying on the ground, his face destroyed and covered in blood. It was like a film, his body was convulsing, although he was able to say something.”Marbella and Puerto Banus have long attracted Liverpool criminals.Budget airlines fly from Manchester and Liverpool to nearby Malaga regularly.Numerous city gangsters are said to be in Spain, including some with links to high-profile murders such as that of Colin Smith, Curtis Warren’s former right-hand man shot dead in Speke last November.As the main gateway into Europe for cannabis smuggled across the Mediterranean from nearby Morocco, a number of Irish drug lords, Eastern European gangs and London criminals also base themselves on the so-called “Costa del Crime”.

British man (MH) is in a stable, but serious, condition following emergency surgery at the Costa del Sol Hospital in Marbella after being shot several times outside a busy shopping centre on the calle Ramón Areces in the exclusive Puerto Banús district at around 7.30pm yesterday evening. The victim, who is believed to have been in trouble with the police back home in the UK, was hit in the right eye, the genitals, the right leg, right arm and pelvis. It is suspected that the attack may have been drug related. The shooter, who is described as a powerfully built young man, fled the scene after the attack, and remains at large.

The Liverpool expat,in his 30s , was blasted in the face, leg, arm, pelvis and genitals as he left a restaurant.It was the third shooting in the Costa del Sol resort in five weeks, and took place just yards from packed bars and shops.
The victim was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery but amazingly survived.
He had just left Solly's Diner, a British restaurant in Puerto Banus, and was about to get into his dark blue BMW when he was shot in broad daylight at 7.30pm last night.The gunman approached him, pulled out a weapon and shot him five times before walking calmly away, witnesses said.The victim collapsed on the floor in a pool of blood as panic broke out among people drinking or shopping nearby.Incredibly, he was still conscious and able to mutter a few words when an ambulance arrived 15 minutes later. One witness told a local newspaper: "We thought they were fireworks until we saw the victim on the ground, with his face destroyed, full of blood."It was like a film his body was convulsing, but he managed to utter a few words." A police source said it was "a miracle" that he had survived the shooting.One report said the gunman was also thought to be British.He walked away "in complete calm" then got into a waiting getaway car, a witness said.The shooting is being investigated by police from Malaga's Anti-Drug and Organised Crime Unit UDYCO.Forensic teams spent yesterday evening searching the scene for clues while detectives began studying CCTV footage.Local reports said the victim had lived in Marbella for several years.
One witness said the victim had sat drinking coffee for several hours on the terrace of Solly's Diner before he was shot.He said: "He sat on his own with a coffee. He was talking constantly on his mobile. Once in a while he got up, walked up and down the street and then sat down again."
A spokeswoman for the Costa del Sol hospital said: "The man suffered multiple gunshot wounds in his right leg, pelvis, genitals, right arm and right eye.
"He was operated on during Wednesday night and he in now in intensive care in a serious but stable condition." A spokesman for the National Police in Marbella said: "We are investigating a shooting in Puerto Banus but cannot give out any more information at this stage.Detectives are investigating possible links to two recent shootings in Marbella.Three people were injured in a shootout in the Aloha Gardens restaurant on 21 August.And two more were injured in another shooting at the Nikki Beach nightclub on 22 August.

Police and forensic experts inspect the scene of the shooting in Puerto Banús last night The man was shot as he left a cafeteria in Calle Ramón Areces, to walk to his car, a dark blue British registered BMW which he had left illegally parked with the windows open.

The victim was said by witnesses to be a man in his 30's from Liverpool who has been resident in Marbella for some years. A man in his 30’s, first reported to be Eastern European by some sources, but now considered to be British by most media, has been injured in a shooting incident in a cafeteria in Puerto Banús, Marbella. At least five shots were fired in the port at 7,30pm last night, according to emergency service sources, with four of the shots hitting the man in the face after a first shot to the knee. He is reported to be seriously injured. Witnesses described the victim as a tall and athletic blonde man, and say he is British, from Liverpool, and has been living in Marbella for several years. They say the shooter, who is also thought to be British, talked to him for some time before opening fire.
Police think that what was the third shooting in the town in less than a month, was a possible settling of criminal scores.

Nigeria’s army said on Monday itwould continue to fight criminal gangs in the oil-producing Niger Delta, underlining the fragility of a ceasefire declared by the region’s main militant group.The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND)declared a temporary ceasefire on Sunday after a week of attackson oil platforms, pipelines, flow stations and gas plants in theheartland of Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry.The six days of violence cut Nigeria’s oil output by at least 150,000 barrels per day and forced Royal Dutch Shell(RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to warn it may not be able to meet contractual obligations on shipments of crude from the country.The army welcomed the ceasefire announcement but said thatits strategy of fighting a network of criminal gangs involved incrude oil theft and kidnappings for ransom in the Niger Deltaremained unchanged.“We are not at war, so the issue of a ceasefire does notarise,” said Brigadier-General Mohammed Yusuf, spokesman forNigeria’s defence headquarters.
“If the restive youths are actually ready to lay down theirarms, then we will change our tactics. If there is no crime,then we will change our tactics. All we want is peace for thedevelopment of the area,” he said.Security experts say a loose coalition of various armedgroups operate under the MEND franchise in the anarchic delta,where foreign oil firms including Shell, Chevron (CVX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Total(TOTF.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Agip (ENI.MI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) have interests.

Pirates armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and AK-47s control the waters far out to sea; close to shore, the threat of Islamist suicide boats keeps captains watchful."It used to be a good place," says Mohamed Shoaib Siddiqui, the Pakistani master of the MV Golina, a rust bucket of a cargo ship loaded down with food desperately needed by Somalia's starving population."It was like Kenya with disco bars, nice hotels, a good life. Then the security situation changed. None of that is possible now."His 829km (510-mile) voyage from the Kenyan port of Mombasa was possible only by staying close to the guns and missiles of a naval escort.
As the master turns the vast hull of the Golina towards Mogadishu's harbour, a Canadian frigate armed with a 57mm cannon stands guard.Cdr Chris Dickinson scans the shoreline with high-powered binoculars from the bridge of Ville de Québec, watching for high-speed skiffs leaving the harbour. Anything that gets within 500 yards of the cargo ship or escort will be turned to driftwood within seconds."The threat here for us is small boats - a suicide boat or a boat armed with RPGs or small arms," he says.The ship's helicopter has been dispatched to make passes close to Mogadishu's pockmarked villas and bombed-out hotels looking for potential threats.
This is the only way humanitarian aid can be delivered to the world's most dangerous city.An estimated 8,000 people have died in the past year-and-a- half of conflict. Tens of thousands more have fled the capital.Last week, Islamist insurgents ordered the city's airport to close amid intelligence reports they had recently received a shipment of surface-to-air missiles.And it could be about to get much worse for Somalia's embattled population, which hovers close to famine. The Ville de Québec is due to return to Nato duties at the end of the week and aid officials are desperate to find another country to continue the escorts.Denise Brown, deputy Somalia director of the World Food Programme, says using land routes could only deliver about 10 per cent of the aid needed."We currently do not have a firm offer for any naval escort and we have 45,000 tonnes of food which needs to be distributed in October," she says. "We are expecting merchant captains to come back to us and say that they won't go in without an escort. It is crunch time."While almost half of Somalia's population needs emergency food aid, the country's armed entrepreneurs are busy exploiting the anarchy to earn hard currency. On land, they run protection rackets and roadblocks; at sea, they call themselves pirates, although they have little in common with the cutlass-wielding brigands of old.The power vacuum has allowed pirates to launch 55 attacks on vessels as they skirt the Horn of Africa this year. Shipowners are warning they may soon be forced to reroute their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, increasing costs to consumers.
Pottengal Mukundan, director of the International Maritime Bureau based in London, says the frequency of attacks is unprecedented and could only be stemmed with international action."Somalia has no government able to deal with piracy. Neighbouring countries lack the resources to tackle this problem," he says. "The only forces that can do anything are coalition naval forces."A US-led naval taskforce, set up as part of "Operation Enduring Freedom" to tackle terrorism, has been given responsibility for trying to keep the sea lanes open.They have established a series of waypoints marking a safe corridor through the Gulf of Aden, which is patrolled by warships and coalition aircraft overhead.And last week European Union foreign ministers announced plans to set up a co-ordination centre to help tackle the threat.But so far the billions of dollars of warships, with their radar, missiles and helicopters, seem powerless to halt the ragtag bands of pirates in simple, fast-moving skiffs.
The result is boom time for the buccaneers, who can earn €1.5 million a time for their trouble.Today there are thought to be 10 gangs operating around Somalia with as many as 1,000 members. Two years ago there were only 100 or so pirates.
In all, 13 ships are under the control of pirates. Two more vessels - a Greek cargo ship and a Hong Kong-flagged vessel - were snatched last week and attacks are being reported almost daily.

throwback to 17th century days of Spanish galleons, Barbary pirates and avenging royal navies, pirates attacked a record 17 ships in the Gulf of Aden in the first two weeks of September compared to just 10 in the entire year of 2007, according to the Kuala Lumpur-based Piracy Reporting Center. "This is the highest number of piracy attacks we have seen in the past five years," said Cyrus Mody, manager of the London-based International Maritime Bureau (IMB) which runs the Piracy Reporting Center, the word's nodal anti-pirate organization. Mody estimates that around 1,000 active pirates in the region have increased attacks on shipping after shifting base from theeast coast of Africa to the Gulf of Aden, which yachties call "pirates' alley". The concern reached crisis level on September 18, with leading international shipping associations such as BIMCO, Intercargo and the International Transport Workers' Federation calling for urgent United Nations action, saying the situation is "in danger of spiralling completely and irretrievably out of control".
Shockingly for governments, pirates operating in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia and Yemen are currently holding 11 ships and nearly 250 crew members hostage. Pirates are demanding and often getting ransoms from US$2 million to $9 million.
Replacing the Malacca Strait as the world's deadliest waters, the Gulf of Aden is spinning its own 21st century pirate story: multi-billion-dollar oil tankers, pirates defying navy patrols to capture ships and crews for fabulous ransoms and even two flourishing pirate towns. An Indian sailor, Maria Vijayan, who was held captive by Somalian pirates for 174 days, told Asia Times Online of the existence of a pirate town called Harardheere, 400 kilometers north of the capital Mogadishu.
Harardheere is a stronghold for hundreds of pirates and their families, and Cyrus Mody of the International Maritime Bureau confirmed its existence.
The other more well known modern pirate town is the port of Eyl in the Somalian region of Puntland, a modern day version of Tortuga, the 18th century Haitian island pirate town made more famous in the movie trilogy Pirates of the Caribbean .
Eyl is an infamous nest for Somali pirate-captured ships as well as a supporting industry feeding off an estimated $30 million in ransom booty that Gulf of Aden pirates bagged in 2007, a staggering indication of the extent of piracy in the Gulf of Aden. Vijayan was chief officer of one of two South Korean ships Mavuno I and Mavuno II that Somali pirates captured off Mogadishu at around 2.30 am on May 15, 2007. The pirates were heavily armed, on a high speed white vessel and began firing before boarding the ships. "We came to know of this pirate town because three South Korean crew members were taken there and imprisoned for 17 days," says Vijayan while narrating details of his harrowing nearly six-month captivity. "The pirates extracted $2 million dollars over a period of time from my company," says Vijayan, now rebuilding his life from his residence in Kanyakumari, in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The United States Navy finally rescued Vijayan and his badly traumatized crew on November 4 2007, after keeping continuous surveillance on the pirate-captured ships. The Indian government, Vijayan said, did nothing. The Somali pirates doing the actual daily dirty work are simple, poorly paid unemployed youth recruited from the interiors of civil war-torn Somalia, according to Vijayan. "I think they must be barely paid $20 or $30 for a piracy operation," he laughed, compared to the $2 million or more ransoms the pirate chief masterminds extort.
"The pirates are well-organized in groups of 15 to 20," says Vijayan, who did not rule out involvement of sections of the Somali army or warlords now tearing the country apart. How strongly the Gulf of Aden pirates have entrenched themselves became clear when, despite an American navy presence and successful French commando assault on September 15, Aden pirates the next day brazenly seized a Hong Kong and a South Korean flag-bearing ship. "The world cannot accept this ... today, these are no longer isolated cases but a genuine industry of crime," French President Nicolas Sarkozy had said a day earlier on September 15, after the French navy parachuted commandos to rescue an elderly French-Polynesian couple, Jean-Yves and Bernadette Delanne from Somali pirates. The world pays a high price to pirates terrorizing the Gulf of Aden. "3.3 million barrels of crude oil - nearly 4% of daily global demand - daily pass through the Gulf of Aden waters that is also a crucial access route for cargo ships from Asia to Europe and the US, " said Manoj Joy of the Chennai-based Sailors Helpline. "So going by these figures, the Gulf of Aden is becoming a gold mine for the pirates." A gold mine it is. Aden pirates freed a Spanish fishing boat after receiving a $1.2 million ransom this April. A German piracy victim Niels Stolberg told the weekly Der Spiegel that pirates had seized his ship 'BBC Trinidad' and its crew for three weeks, threatened to blow up the $23 million ship, demanded a ransom of $8 million and finally settled for $2 million. "The governments have to act very fast to save hostages," says Vijayan of the estimated 250 sailors of many countries now suffering hostage trauma. "Having experienced what it is to be held captive by pirates, I know what the victims must be going through." He says the Indian government and navy must get involved as thousands of Indian workers sail the Gulf waters. Indian seafarers are particularly aggrieved, complaining of government inaction even though Indian seamen are among the worst-hit piracy victims. While Vijayan gratefully acknowledges American and South Korean governments for rescuing him and his crew, he says that no Indian government official has met him, and more astonishingly, no one from the Indian Navy has interviewed him. Yet the Indian Navy, sans homework, has sought government permission to intervene after 18 Indian sailors were among the crew of 22 of the MT Stolt Valor, a chemical tanker carrying a Hong Kong flag that Aden pirates hijacked on September 16. Unconfirmed reports say the pirates are demanding a $9 million ransom. The Indian Navy finally announced plans on September 20 to patrol the Gulf of Aden, along with navy forces from other countries. "India is one of the largest suppliers of manpower to the global shipping industry and it is of paramount importance for the government to make sure their lives are safe," said Manoj Joy, of the Chennai-based Sailor's Helpline. "The seafarers are contributing in a big way to the Indian economy." Other Indian sailor associations are threatening to strike if the government does not effectively act soon. War-torn Somalia has allowed foreign warships to enter its territorial waters to tackle piracy, while the UN Security Council has passed a resolution letting naval vessels enter Somalia's territorial waters and repress piracy "by all necessary means". Successful multi-million dollar ransom demands are multiplying "copycat" pirate attacks, say International Maritime Bureau officials, with pirates running amuck in Somalia, which has had no functioning central government since former dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was booted out in 1991.
Since trigger-happy, heavily-armed Gulf of Aden pirates also fire rocket-propelled grenades, fears increase of an oil tanker being blown up and throwing the crucial global trade waterway into a oil-spill nightmare. An IMB official said it's a "miracle" that no oil tanker has been hit with rocket fire. The IMB website has published two photographs of three white-painted pirate "mother ships", said to be Russian-made trawlers and a tugboat that pirate gangs use as base to launch fast, inflatable boats for attacking victim ships. Seafarer associations globally also say that ship owners are not doing enough to protect their vessels and crew, and must invest in better security, a few thousand dollars to protect lives and avoid paying million dollar ransoms. The IMB recommends that ship owners use latest security systems such "Secure-Ship", a non-lethal, electrical fence to repel uninvited guests visiting with rocket launchers. Other Inmarsat and other satellite systems-based anti-piracy gizmos include the ShipLoc, which lets shipping companies easily track their vessels, as well as enabling an attacked crew to send a SOS. Though some governments are waking up to the Gulf of Aden piracy threat, there is little coordinated, sustained global action. Yemen and Oman, two Gulf of Aden countries, are discussing establishing a regional center to combat piracy. European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels this month created a crisis group to deal with future hijackings. Spain announced that it is sending a P-3 Orion military aircraft to patrol the waters off the coast of Somalia, while the US Navy and France have made clear they will not be handling pirates with kid gloves.
Cyrus Mody of the IMB says some governments unfortunately try to hide the piracy problem, partly to avoid fears of safety about their ports, fears that could affect trade interests, aid, grants or concessions they get.
"Either governments may accept piracy as a problem and deal with it," says Mody, "or they may try to suppress reports." In which case 21st century pirates have not to much to worry about, while the rest of the world increasingly does.

Montreal Mafia apparently had their hands in half the pots in Montreal- threatening coffee shops that didn’t purchase their beans from their approved wholesalers, threatening non-Montreal contractors who did work in the city, and driving shops that didn’t comply with their demands out of business.They also trafficked drugs through the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport, involving employees in several levels and divisions of the airport. They brought hundreds of kilos of cocaine through the airport into Canada- enough to keep the Navy supplied for a few years, at least.
They also beat, severely, people who owed them money- gamblers and other people who owed them money. Notably, they beat up John Xanthoudakis, the CEO of a Norshield Financial Group, in a law office on Place Ville Marie, where apparently his face “opened like a pancake” and that he “was pissing blood”. Xanthoudakis, they claimed, owed them five million dollars. They also drove insurance broker and financial advisor Magdi Samaan to suicide, and forced his widow to remortgage her home to pay off the mobsters, who claimed that her husband had defrauded. funds from members of the Montreal Italian community. (via)While all of this is sordidly interesting so far, we have to wait until mid-October for the full charges and details, sadly. However, while these six have gone in through plea bargains, many other lower gang members will be working their way through the courts- so hopefully some of this information, and more, can be a part of the legal record.

Gangster Rajesh More alias Raju, 38, of the Karanjikar gang, has been arrested by the Mulund police. Acting on a tip-off that More would come to a hotel at Panch Rasta in Mulund, the police laid a trap and nabbed him at midnight on Wednesday. On Thursday, he was remanded in police custody till September 17. More, who had earlier worked as a sharp shooter for underworld don-turned-MLA Arun Gawli, joined Vinayak Dattaram Karanjikar who also parted ways with Gawli and formed his own gang. He has been working for Karanjikar since the late 1990s and has cases of murder, attempt to murder, extortion and kidnapping registered against him at police stations in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane. Police first got clues about More when he and some other members of the Karanjikar gang threatened a builder from Mulund on August 31 last year. When they barged into the builder’s office wielding guns and asked the staff to make a call to someone called as Bhai, their act was caught on the CCTV. The builder had lodged a complaint and submitted a copy of the recording to the police. The Karanjikar gang extorted money mostly from builders in the eastern suburbs. Karanjikar, 45, was killed in an encounter with the Mumbai crime branch officials on January 15. Senior inspector Prakash Landge of the Mulund police said, “More has confessed that he was involved in threatening the Mulund builder last year.”