Radio Mogadishu reported Sunday that the vice president of the Galmudug Regional Administration in central Somalia said it freed four Pakistanis and 10 Iranians from pirate hands some time back.
It said the Pakistani government came and picked up its nationals, but the Iranian government hasn’t done anything.
Vice President Abdisamad Nur Guled said his government isn’t setting any conditions on the release of the Iranians and doesn’t want any payments. It just wants Iran to come and pick the men up.
The Islamic Republic, meanwhile, announced that the two ships it dispatched last week to fight pirates in the Gulf of Aden had already foiled an attempted ship hijacking. It said the ships received a distress call from a UAE oil tanker and sailed to its rescue, driving off the pirates.
This was the seventh time the Iranian Navy had driven off pirates this Persian year, which is only seven weeks old, the Navy said. The ships Iran has on anti-piracy duty now are the Shahid Naqdi, a corvette of 1,135 tons built by the United States in 1964, and the Bandar Abbas, a light replenishment ship displacing 4,673 tons and built by the Germans in 1973.