here but yet to be corroborated.
it’s unclear if the Iranians really have Garad. so far, only Africa Review is reporting it… “He was like Carlos the Jackal in the crime world,” Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers Association told Africa Review [about Garad].
according to David F. Marley…the “secretive” Garad — it’s not his real name; it means “clan leader” — worked his way up from hijacking small vessels near the Somali fishing port of Eyl to seizing a Japanese bulk carrier, the Stella Maris, for 11 weeks in 2008 before its owners paid him $2 million. not many people have interviewed Garad. during one of his rare interviews, Marley recounts, Garad appeared “ragged” and his eyes were “scratched raw by constant rubbing — a textbook case of khat withdrawal.”
Garad may have been on drugs if he underestimated the Iranian navy.
Heather E. Lanthorn 