The Somali Pirates told the truth

The New York Times is now reporting the Somali Pirates were telling the truth about tanks which were destined for Southern Sudan onboard the MV/Faina which they hijacked.

This from my blog in Feb. 2009

Thursday, February 5, 2009
Pirates release M/V Faina

Finally, after 5 months, the ship carrying tanks and arms will be released.
Kenya says the cargo is theirs. I am sure there will be intense interest as to where this armament ends up.

And this from the New York Times, Dec. 8, 2010

KHARTOUM, Sudan — It was September 2008 and a band of Somali pirates made a startling discovery.

Kenyan security officers guarded T-72 tanks that were offloaded in Mombasa from the Faina. The ship was also found to be carrying 150 grenade launchers and 6 antiaircraft guns.

The Ukrainian freighter they had just commandeered in the Gulf of Aden was packed with weapons, including 32 Soviet-era battle tanks, and the entire arsenal was headed for the regional government in southern Sudan. The Ukrainian and Kenyan governments vigorously denied that, insisting that the tanks were intended for the Kenyan military.

But it turns out the pirates were telling the truth — and the Kenyans and Ukrainians were not, at least publicly. According to several secret State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks, the tanks not only were headed to southern Sudan, but they were the latest installment of several underground arms shipments. By the time the freighter was seized, 67 T-72 tanks had already been delivered to bolster southern Sudan’s armed forces against the government in Khartoum, an international pariah for its human rights abuses in Darfur.