Spanish official says 2 captured piracy suspects will be brought to Spain over trawler hijack

Spain: 2 pirate suspects to be brought to Madrid

MADRID — Two men captured in connection with the hijacking of a Spanish tuna boat in the Indian Ocean will be brought to Madrid on orders from a judge, a Defense Ministry official said Tuesday.

As the trawler Alakrana and its 36-member crew remained under pirate control for a fifth day, the wife of one of the sailors said she worried the arrests would stretch out the drama, perhaps causing the pirates to demand the release of the arrested men as a condition for freeing the hostages.

The suspects — identified in court papers as Abdu Willy and Raageggesey — will be brought to Madrid as soon as possible to face preliminary charges of kidnapping, criminal association and theft, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with ministry rules. Their nationalities were not given.

The Alakrana was seized Friday about 375 nautical miles off the east coast of Somalia. On Sunday, Spanish naval forces taking part in an EU anti-piracy flotilla and trailing the captive trawler caught the two pirate suspects as they headed in a skiff for the Somali coast.

Silvia Albes, wife of Alakrana crew member Pablo Costas, said she agreed with the arrests but thinks Spanish authorities should have kept the operation quiet.

“I don’t know if the pirate gang knows or not, or how it might affect the people on the ship,” she told the AP from Galicia in northwestern Spain. “I think it was a risky moment to release all that information.”

Albes said she spoke to Costas briefly on Sunday. “He had time to say he was all right and they were being treated well,” she said.

Authorities said that the Spaniards let the pirate suspects’ skiff get a good distance away so as not to alert the rest of the pirates.

A Spanish helicopter spotted the two “lying down and covered up with a blanket in the bow area,” Judge Baltasar Garzon wrote Monday night in his order.

Two Spanish dinghies approached the skiff and Spanish forces opened fire twice when one of the suspects stood up abruptly and made a suspicious movement with his hand. That man sustained a superficial chest wound, Garzon said.

The government says it is working on diplomatic and other fronts to secure the release of the Alakrana and its crew. But it will not say if it will consider paying a ransom.

It is reported to have done so in April 2008 — about $1.2 million — to secure the release of another Spanish trawler hijacked off the coast of Somalia and held for six days.

The Spanish radio station Cadena Ser reported Tuesday that officials in the EU anti-piracy flotilla are not ruling out the possibility that the pirates will demand the release of their detained colleagues as a condition for freeing the fishermen.

John Harbor, a spokesman for the flotilla, which is based in Britain, dismissed the report as speculation and called it “one of 10 scenarios” for how this crisis might evolve.

Of the two captured pirates, Harbor said: “It would have been stupid if we had not detained them.”

Albes said she had spoken to families of other sailors and they are also worried.