Somali Pirates
From November 2008:
The Sirius Star, which was launched in March at a cost of £65million, is the biggest ship ever hijacked.
Its captain, Marek Nishky, said yesterday the crew had each been able to speak to their families and were being well treated.
No hostages have ever been harmed by the Somali pirates.
And then this from 2011:
The yachting enthusiasts from California and Washington killed off the coast of East Africa on Tuesday were the first Americans slain by Somali pirates since a wave of attacks began six years ago.
One of the American couples had been sailing around the world since 2004 handing out Bibles. The deaths of the four travelers, all in their late 50s or 60s, appeared to underscore an increasingly brutal and aggressive shift by pirates in their treatment of hostages.
Killing hostages “has now become part of our rules,” said a pirate who identified himself as Muse Abdi. He referred as a turning point to last week’s sentencing of a pirate to 33 years in prison for the 2009 attack on the U.S. cargo vessel the Maersk Alabama — just two days before the hijacking.
“From now on, anyone who tries to rescue the hostages in our hands will only collect dead bodies,” Abdi said. “It will never, ever happen that hostages are rescued and we are hauled to prison.
So it would appear the pirates operated for 6+ years without killing or hurting anybody and have changed their tactics since captured pirates have had to face the full force of the law.
