Speaker 1: Slippery Slope, a true crime podcast about Mount Io and
Speaker 1: the Missing water Slide with Dave O'Neill and Brad Oaks.
Speaker 2: Hello, it's Dave O'Neill and Bradford os and.
Speaker 3: It's episode three of our podcast, Slippery Slope. Now let's
Speaker 3: get you one up to speak. They're just tuned in
Speaker 3: Mount Eyes. Are wanted the water slide. They got it
Speaker 3: made in Turkey and at the end of the last episode,
Speaker 3: what happened Bradford.
Speaker 2: Well, the slide didn't turn up.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: No, it's a pretty big thing to go missing, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes, So it's on a ship. It's on its way
Speaker 3: through the Sewer's Canal and there's some kind of pirate incident.
Speaker 4: Just for geography, Yes, it's Sewers Canal. Then it becomes
Speaker 4: the Red Sea and then I believe it goes into
Speaker 4: the Gulf of Oman, Yeah, and then into the Indian
Speaker 4: Ocean and on.
Speaker 3: The other side it's the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2: And Mediterranean exactly.
Speaker 3: If you're coming from Turkey, you're coming through the Red
Speaker 3: Sea into the Sewers Canal into the Mediterraneans.
Speaker 2: Correct, it's a shortcut. It's a shortcut so that you
Speaker 2: have to go all the way around down past All Africa.
Speaker 2: I think it's quite a devilish as well to.
Speaker 3: Go past and South Africa's on the bottom, and then
Speaker 3: you've got to go up and it's another week or
Speaker 3: two weeks or something. Yeah, well, let's get a bit
Speaker 3: more information from Mark Miller, the project manager.
Speaker 5: Turkey's I suppose that's where the one of the main
Speaker 5: manufacturers for the water slides are and cost of fishient
Speaker 5: time efficient's questionable, but definitely cost efficient. So originally it
Speaker 5: was a sixteen week procurement lead time which turned into
Speaker 5: I think just over twenty four weeks up.
Speaker 3: What were the delays? There were rumors of pirate.
Speaker 5: The pirate rumors are pretty much true. There was. There
Speaker 5: was a bit of an issue the Sew's Canal where
Speaker 5: one of the continents got herld up and pirates seemed
Speaker 5: to take a bit of a lake into the slides
Speaker 5: and off off that went.
Speaker 3: Where did it go? Maybe?
Speaker 5: Yeah, the pirates love slides. Maybe they've got their own
Speaker 5: little water parks somewhere. Pirates of the Caribbean, you know,
Speaker 5: they love it.
Speaker 3: So what did it go missing? Or did you find it?
Speaker 2: Or they went missing?
Speaker 5: So they then to re manufacture and we send out
Speaker 5: more doc in hence the heavy delay to the project.
Speaker 3: The original water slide actually went.
Speaker 2: Missing parts, parts of it in parts.
Speaker 3: Was this in the Sewer's Canal after the Sewers Canals?
Speaker 5: I believe it's in the siouxse Canal.
Speaker 3: Well, that's interesting he believes it happened in the Sewers Canal.
Speaker 3: But what is the history of the Sewers Canal.
Speaker 2: I think the French started to build it.
Speaker 3: I remember seeing photos of it being dug out by shovels.
Speaker 4: In seventeen ninety eight, Napoleon tried to find the remnants
Speaker 4: of an ancient waterway. Oh, which just started this conversation
Speaker 4: about this was canw A bit like the trains of
Speaker 4: an Olburne Airport gets talked about a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people get their photo taken, but nothing much happens.
Speaker 3: I remember when it was built because of the Crown.
Speaker 3: I saw it in the Crown. NASA controlled it.
Speaker 4: It opened in under French control in eighteen sixty nine, right,
Speaker 4: I think people kind of squabble over it for years,
Speaker 4: but then NASA, the Egyptian president.
Speaker 2: Well, I can read this here.
Speaker 4: In nineteen fifty one, Egypt repudiated the nineteen thirty six
Speaker 4: Treaty with Great Britain. Britain had to remove their troops
Speaker 4: nineteen fifty six. NASA responded by nationalizing the canal on
Speaker 4: twenty sixth July nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 3: There was a bit of a hooha about that because
Speaker 3: that's in the crown, so NASA president of Egypt. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he was one that controlled it.
Speaker 4: In the end, it became an enormous source of revenue
Speaker 4: for them because how much does.
Speaker 3: It go through? I think it's six hundred grand, isn't
Speaker 3: it for a ship? Six hundred grand?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's there's your city link, as you're told.
Speaker 4: But importantly it's a US dollars as a great source
Speaker 4: of US dollars. Everybody has to pay and use of dollars,
Speaker 4: which leads me to think that it's gold mine and
Speaker 4: for Egypt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's not that white. I know, it's not
Speaker 3: that wide, so it would be easy to attack in it,
Speaker 3: but it'd be hard to get out anyway. We need
Speaker 3: a bit more information about the actual attack, like what
Speaker 3: happened was eating stolen. Let's go to Daniel from Simplex,
Speaker 3: who was involved in making the slide and delivering the slide.
Speaker 6: It goes into production and yeah, it all comes in
Speaker 6: forty four containers with the steel work and all the
Speaker 6: bolts like a package sort of kit, and with drawings.
Speaker 6: It don't make sense. And then you try and put
Speaker 6: it all together over here.
Speaker 3: Now, what happened with the Mountay as a water slide.
Speaker 6: It's a little bit hard to get an extension of
Speaker 6: time when you approach the council and say pirates were.
Speaker 3: Involved, right, so pirates were involved.
Speaker 6: Pirates were involved. I think the pirates actually boarded the ship.
Speaker 6: I don't know if it was Jack Sparrow or not.
Speaker 6: That's unconfirmed.
Speaker 3: Okay, so pirates were definitely involved. I don't really understand
Speaker 3: how they got actually got the stuff, because when we
Speaker 3: think of containers on a ship, they're closed off, you know,
Speaker 3: the big classic metal containers that we see on trucks,
Speaker 3: on trains, et cetera. But apparently these were something called
Speaker 3: I think open top containers. Well, let Daniel explain.
Speaker 6: The steel work comes with no lids. They're open top containers.
Speaker 6: All the steel works they loaded in from the top.
Speaker 6: When it turns up the site, you unloaded with a
Speaker 6: crane or a front and rip it out from the
Speaker 6: top at all fiberglasses in what we call high kids,
Speaker 6: which are a little bit higher than normal containers, and
Speaker 6: they pack all the fiberglass pieces in sections like that.
Speaker 6: It's actually quite a skillful process to pack a forty
Speaker 6: foot container tightly with fiberglass. If customs end up getting
Speaker 6: it and rip it all out, they can never get
Speaker 6: it back in, which is normally one of our issues
Speaker 6: we can have.
Speaker 3: Right So, now understand that the containers are open, you
Speaker 3: can actually get in there and have a look and
Speaker 3: get stuff out. Interesting that both the guys have mentioned
Speaker 3: Jack Sparrow a.
Speaker 2: Bit of sadness for me.
Speaker 4: There's so many other pirates, I know, you know, why
Speaker 4: would Jack Sparrow be.
Speaker 2: Captain Kid. You've got black Beard captain more than you've
Speaker 2: got Captain Pugwash captain. I don't know if his I
Speaker 2: don't think he was. I think it was. I think
Speaker 2: it was Jack Sparrow.
Speaker 3: He's everyone mentions Jack Sparrow, Captain Hook, Captain Hook from
Speaker 3: just you know, and don't reckon that story was just
Speaker 3: made up as they went along.
Speaker 2: How he lose his hand on crocodile? Come on, mate, Yes,
Speaker 2: he's got the ball.
Speaker 3: Well, because we all think of pirates are something cute,
Speaker 3: a parrot on their shoulder, a wooden leg, But of
Speaker 3: course these are like Somali pirates.
Speaker 4: I have a pirate joke. Well, everybody knows the joke.
Speaker 4: What's the pirate's favorite leader? Well, no, in fact, it's
Speaker 4: the seas all.
Speaker 3: Right, But have you seen that Tom Hanks movie Mister
Speaker 3: Roberts where he's it's it's just it's like he's on
Speaker 3: a big cargo ship and Somali pirates board and capture
Speaker 3: the vessel. So it's those kinds of pirates. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: believe it's not the cute pirates.
Speaker 4: Not a few pirates, and it's not the people who
Speaker 4: back in the nineties were.
Speaker 2: Just copying videos. They were pirates.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, video pirates.
Speaker 4: The number one conserned the FBI at one stage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a crime.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, Fast and Furious was about copying DVDs.
Speaker 3: The first movie was about DVD theft.
Speaker 2: I had no idea. Yeah, I've never seen any of them.
Speaker 3: Are there any other mentions of Jack Sparrow from anyone
Speaker 3: on this podcast. Let's go to Cogo, the deputy mayor
Speaker 3: of Mount iSER.
Speaker 7: Yeah, someone probably in Somalia has got half a slide,
Speaker 7: so I don't know what they're doing with it. And
Speaker 7: when they said pirates, I'm like, oh, Jack Sparrow, So
Speaker 7: Jack Sparrot's the only pirate I'd like to meet.
Speaker 3: There we go another. Jack Sparrow mentioned you've got to
Speaker 3: imagine though, so the pirates of the board of the ship,
Speaker 3: they've got part of the water slide or something's happening.
Speaker 3: But what's happening in Mount iSER. I mean, that's a
Speaker 3: long way from the Sewers Canal, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It's a long way from any water. It really does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Here's Danny l the former mayor.
Speaker 8: So when they said to me that the ship had
Speaker 8: been taken over by pirates, and to me, it was
Speaker 8: like the dogs ate my homework. You know, they haven't
Speaker 8: ordered it. They're delaying and on purpose, and they're just
Speaker 8: trying to get it after the elections. So it's not
Speaker 8: something I could point and say to see, look what I've.
Speaker 3: Done, you know, Yeah, Daniel the former me, well, I
Speaker 3: suppose with local politics, people could be thinking this is
Speaker 3: just something's made up, pirates in the Sewers Canal.
Speaker 4: You're like, what it sounds like something Buiolchie Peterson would
Speaker 4: have said in the seventies or eighties.
Speaker 2: You know, well, you know.
Speaker 9: Pirates, Jack, get out, bloody Jacks Barro or Bob Catter
Speaker 9: would say, So let's cross the Shae Donovan, she actually
Speaker 9: runs the aquatic center of the pull Man is where
Speaker 9: the water slide is meant to be, So she's waiting
Speaker 9: for the water slide.
Speaker 3: This is what she had to say when she heard
Speaker 3: about the pirates.
Speaker 10: So I wasn't too sure what was going on because Mark,
Speaker 10: the project manager, is a bit of a joker and
Speaker 10: if there's something delayed in a contractor might be a
Speaker 10: day late delivering something, he'll make a bit of a
Speaker 10: joke about it. So I didn't really believe what he
Speaker 10: was telling us. I thought it was just some gimmick
Speaker 10: he was coming up with something. But then when we
Speaker 10: found out for real it was a pirate attack on
Speaker 10: the ship that was carrying the containers, Yeah, it was
Speaker 10: a little bit like, oh, okay, of course this has
Speaker 10: happened to us in Mount Eysa. What else would happen?
Speaker 3: Shay, who runs a pool in man eyes hats off
Speaker 3: to her. She didn't mention Jack Sparrow When talking about pirates,
Speaker 3: she's been the first not to mention Jack Sparrow. So okay,
Speaker 3: there seems to be disagreement about where the attack actually happened.
Speaker 3: Let's got to Mark Miller, the project manager.
Speaker 5: I believe it's in the Sioux's Canal, and then the
Speaker 5: rest of it got diversed. So then the diversion that
Speaker 5: didn't have to go run.
Speaker 3: The coast of Africa.
Speaker 5: Then, but the pirates attacked in the Siouxs Canal.
Speaker 3: Then of course that takes a lot longer to go
Speaker 3: around the bottom of Africa.
Speaker 5: Of course, of course, And he's the twenty four week delay.
Speaker 6: No, I wasn't in the canal. Yeah, it was in
Speaker 6: the ocean bits around there. Have you ever seen that
Speaker 6: Tom Hanks movie where he's at the end he's going
Speaker 6: like oh yeah, Like yeah, I'm pretty sure it was
Speaker 6: those type of guys.
Speaker 1: No, I don't really know.
Speaker 6: We've had a bit of pirate activity, but none that
Speaker 6: have ever boarded the actual ship. Last year especially, there
Speaker 6: was constant pirate doos and like I said, that's hard
Speaker 6: to get it over along with the client pirates again,
Speaker 6: sorry you water slide I can installed in time.
Speaker 3: But right, So this seems to be a bit of disagreement.
Speaker 3: That's Daniel there from Swimplex about where the attack actually happened.
Speaker 3: What's your thinking, Bradford. You've become an expert on sewers
Speaker 3: Canal via the internet piracy.
Speaker 2: Well also I tracked down expert.
Speaker 3: This is what we need. We need a piracy expert.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know, look, I was dubious in the
Speaker 4: first place that anything would take part in a sewers canal,
Speaker 4: just because of how much the Egyptian government would guard it.
Speaker 2: And it's so narrow.
Speaker 3: Least, yeah, yeah, narrow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And as we'll discover, there's also a definition of
Speaker 4: piracy that's going to come into play.
Speaker 3: Really, and there's a HOOTI rebels.
Speaker 2: Well there's HOOTI rebels.
Speaker 4: And then so when people say Somali pirates, I looked
Speaker 4: on the map and Somalia was like about well two
Speaker 4: and a half thousand kilometers from the sewers Canal.
Speaker 2: So that's a long way to go to work.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you were a pirate, I mean it's
Speaker 3: like sort of being in the nightclub or being outside
Speaker 3: there's people lining up for the sewers Canal. Right, yeah,
Speaker 3: now you could it's like lining up for a nightclub.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't go into the nightclub, you'd I don't want
Speaker 3: to talk about attacking people, but if you were going
Speaker 3: to do something, surely you do it outside. Sure you
Speaker 3: do it in the bit before the Sewers Canal.
Speaker 4: Well, it depends if they're going the way they were coming.
Speaker 4: Don't coming from Turkey. So they're coming down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, so they're coming down.
Speaker 4: I think you turn left at Israel or something like that,
Speaker 4: and then you come to the Sewers Canal and get
Speaker 4: in the canal.
Speaker 2: Then you go into I think the Red Sea, and
Speaker 2: then like I said, I think it's the Gulf.
Speaker 3: I'm learning that I don't know anything about geography.
Speaker 4: And then well, because what you've got coming from Turkey's
Speaker 4: basically that's the.
Speaker 2: End of Europe.
Speaker 4: Yes, to me, it was dubius. Although we should cut
Speaker 4: to the expert. Yes, find out a bit about piracy.
Speaker 3: Tamson Page is We'll let her introduce herself, but she's
Speaker 3: an academic with many qualifications in this area.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 11: So I'm doctor Tamson Philip A. Page. I am an
Speaker 11: associate professor at Deacon Law School. I did my m
Speaker 11: phil at A and U studying the application of piracy
Speaker 11: law in Somali counter piracy operations. And I did that
Speaker 11: while also working with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Speaker 11: That about Somali piracy would have been in twenty twelve
Speaker 11: and twenty thirteen. I've also got a PhD in International
Speaker 11: security law, and I teach and research in international law
Speaker 11: and legal ethics.
Speaker 3: That's impressive. That's impressive. Is there piracy in the sewers Canal?
Speaker 11: The question that becomes if it's piracy or something else,
Speaker 11: because legally it actually wouldn't be piracy at a pure
Speaker 11: legal level, which is really quite interesting in that regard
Speaker 11: because of some quirks of jurisdiction.
Speaker 3: Right, well, because of the sewers Canal.
Speaker 11: Yeah, because the sewers Canal forms essentially they're straight for
Speaker 11: international navigation. Piracy by legal definition can only occur in
Speaker 11: international waters or the high seeds legally refer.
Speaker 3: To it, right, And so I mean, but are there
Speaker 3: Somali pirates active in the sewers Canal?
Speaker 11: Not? In the sewers They're active mostly through the Red
Speaker 11: Sea and the Horn of Africa, so down kind of
Speaker 11: at the point where you have the Red Sea going
Speaker 11: out into the Indian Ocean through the Gulf of Aden
Speaker 11: and all of those areas kind of with Somalia and
Speaker 11: Yemen on either side of that exit from the Red Sea.
Speaker 4: So if they're avowed pirates of declared pirates, but then
Speaker 4: they actually committed crime in what is in international waters,
Speaker 4: what do you designate them as.
Speaker 11: Su as canal? My understanding is Egyptian territory. So essentially
Speaker 11: they are just engaging in theft or larceny or whatever
Speaker 11: under Egyptian law. Because they're committing it in Egyptian internal waters.
Speaker 2: It seemed unlikely because the Egyptians seem to police it
Speaker 2: so well, there wouldn't be a lot of crime going
Speaker 2: on there, you know of that overt nature.
Speaker 11: Well, I wouldn't expect so, but it is a major waterway,
Speaker 11: as we all found out when the ever given ran
Speaker 11: aground at all. Global trade stopped for a few weeks
Speaker 11: while they dug it out. The designation of pirate versus
Speaker 11: just theft is literally one of did it happen more
Speaker 11: than twelve nautical miles from the coast of a state?
Speaker 11: If yes, it's piracy, If no, it's just armed robbery.
Speaker 11: At c right National Maritime Organation, when keeping statistics on
Speaker 11: this treat them as the one set of crime. But
Speaker 11: legally you're only a pirate if you're doing this on
Speaker 11: the high seas. And there's a whole bunch of really
Speaker 11: interesting international political reasons for that, But generally speaking, yeah,
Speaker 11: if it's not happening on the high seas, you're not
Speaker 11: doing piracy. You're just engaging in theft.
Speaker 2: So it's a bit of a champagne versus sparkling wine thing,
Speaker 2: isn't it?
Speaker 11: It is? But the reasons for it are less because
Speaker 11: the French are snotting and weird, and more because countries
Speaker 11: like Philippines and Indonesia and things like that have vast
Speaker 11: amounts of what we call archipelagic waters where they have
Speaker 11: exclusive jurisdiction and they don't want Chinese and US militaries
Speaker 11: just sending their navy patrolling through all of these waters
Speaker 11: under the guise of counter piracy operations.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And also in the Suits Canal recently there's been they're
Speaker 3: not called pirates, are called rebels, the Hooti rebels, which
Speaker 3: they seem to have a different aim than say, the
Speaker 3: normal standard Somali pirate. Is that correct?
Speaker 11: I mean, I'm reluctant to call them rebels because actually
Speaker 11: they control seventy five percent of the populations in Yemen,
Speaker 11: so calling them rebels seems to be a denial of
Speaker 11: the fact that they are just the government of Yemen. Functionally.
Speaker 11: These days, they're engaging in attacks on merchant shipping, they
Speaker 11: claim out of solidarity and part of actions against Israel's
Speaker 11: activities in Gaza. However, they're attacking merchant shipping, which is
Speaker 11: just either a war crime or a crime against humanity.
Speaker 11: It's either it's unlawful, regardless of the reasons for doing it.
Speaker 11: But again, the question about whether or not that's piracy
Speaker 11: comes down to whether or not you accept that the
Speaker 11: Hohothies are just the government of Yemen or if they
Speaker 11: are an independent belligerent organization that doesn't have governmental powers.
Speaker 3: And they're not stealing stuff, are they? They just seemed
Speaker 3: to get on boats and hold hostages and stuff.
Speaker 11: They're not really stealing stuff. That doesn't mean Somali pirates
Speaker 11: didn't really steal much either. Somali pirates were generally taking
Speaker 11: ships hostage and holding them for ransom and then releasing
Speaker 11: them with all the cargo and crew after ransoms had
Speaker 11: been paid. But the Huthi are often doing a lot
Speaker 11: of attacks with drones and things like that and sinking
Speaker 11: motion shipping as well as hostage taking, etc. Their goal
Speaker 11: is not economic, whereas Somali pirates goal was purely economic.
Speaker 3: So with this case that we're looking into, people are
Speaker 3: in disagree about where the actual attack happened, but they
Speaker 3: do believe that the so called pirates boarded the ship
Speaker 3: and stole stuff. But I'm pretty sure now that we
Speaker 3: talked to you and other accounts that it was in
Speaker 3: the Red Sea. So they all seem to think it
Speaker 3: was Somali pirates. Why would they take bits of a
Speaker 3: water slide? They wouldn't know what that was, surely, I.
Speaker 11: Don't know whether they know it was. I mean that said,
Speaker 11: they'd probably be able to tell what a water slide
Speaker 11: is in Somalia just as well as anywhere else. However,
Speaker 11: it all comes down to economics. Like pirates are driven
Speaker 11: by what can we sell or in the case of
Speaker 11: hostage shaking, how can we make a profit to make
Speaker 11: ends meet in an area that has been destroyed by
Speaker 11: civil war since nineteen ninety two. But the northern regions
Speaker 11: are fairly stable with autonomous governments, but those governments aren't
Speaker 11: recognized internationally, so they have no trade or anything else
Speaker 11: that sustains an economy, so enter piracy as an economic alternative.
Speaker 4: So they do have that range then to travel all
Speaker 4: the way up into the Red Sea.
Speaker 11: They have been attacked from Somali pirates up to four
Speaker 11: hundred nautical miles off into the Indian Ocean off the
Speaker 11: coast of Somalia. They have significant range, usually because they
Speaker 11: usually use ocean going fishing vessels as motherships to then
Speaker 11: launch boarding skiffs to board ships. They will kind of
Speaker 11: then have ladders with hooks that they'll attached to the
Speaker 11: side of the cargo vessel and climb up with their
Speaker 11: assault rifles to take control of it, take control of
Speaker 11: a ship, and quite frequently they'll fire rocket propelled grenades
Speaker 11: from these boarding skiffs at the cargo vessels in an
Speaker 11: attempt to get them to surrender before boarding.
Speaker 3: Well, and I read somewhere that they're mainly ex fishermen.
Speaker 3: Is that right because they're fishing was ruined or is
Speaker 3: that just like an over myth.
Speaker 11: Originally there was some veracity to that because with the
Speaker 11: entire lack of government in Somalia, what you had is
Speaker 11: an inability to enforce fishing rights licensing, so a lot
Speaker 11: of foreign fishing fleets were coming in and effectively poaching
Speaker 11: Somali in the Somali Exclusive Economic Zone of what would
Speaker 11: be Somali fish stocks. So you did have that element
Speaker 11: going on when kind of we started seeing the rise
Speaker 11: of Somali piracy in two thousand and seven, but mostly
Speaker 11: that's kind of abated as a reason, and it became
Speaker 11: very swiftly an organized crime organization rather than rogue former fishermen.
Speaker 4: Right, excellent in terms of heists, if you like, I
Speaker 4: would consider that the slides are fairly exotic thing to
Speaker 4: steal as opposed to weapons and things for resale. Have
Speaker 4: you heard of any other kind of exotic heists in
Speaker 4: that region?
Speaker 11: There was one, I can't remember the exact incident. A
Speaker 11: cargo vessel that was actually transporting a whole bunch of
Speaker 11: Russian military equipment that was being sold by Russia elsewhere
Speaker 11: got hijacked and held hostage for ransom by Somali pirates,
Speaker 11: and when the ransom finally got negotiated and paid, all
Speaker 11: of the armaments and military equipment was still on board
Speaker 11: the ship. They didn't take it because it would have
Speaker 11: been bad for business. So if they're taking a water slide.
Speaker 11: It's either because they wanted to install it to use
Speaker 11: or they had a market for it.
Speaker 3: A market for the water slide. That's fascinating.
Speaker 4: There's no chance of finding these people, but what would
Speaker 4: happen to them if it was piracy.
Speaker 11: When you have people caught for piracy, what you first
Speaker 11: then need to find is is there a nation state
Speaker 11: that's willing to prosecute them for piracy? Because under the
Speaker 11: Law of the Sea Convention, everyone has jurisdiction over piracy,
Speaker 11: so anyone can engage in prosecution, which does lead us
Speaker 11: to the situation where we have some pretty wild situations
Speaker 11: with piracy prosecutions. A lot of my work was on
Speaker 11: how do we prosecute pirates? And realistically, ninety eight percent
Speaker 11: of pirates who are captured are released without charge because
Speaker 11: there's no capacity to actually engage in prosecution. And most
Speaker 11: states see no point or purpose in prosecuting the at
Speaker 11: sea pirates because they're not the ones in charge, So
Speaker 11: most states will only prosecute the people in charge, which
Speaker 11: does lead us to the hilarious situation of the prosecution
Speaker 11: in Belgian of Afwani Senior. So Afwani Senior was a
Speaker 11: Somali organized crime group leader ran a piracy syndicate and
Speaker 11: engaged in a number of different hijackings and ransoms and
Speaker 11: what have you, and hostage takings that so happened to
Speaker 11: be one of them was a Belgian ship. Eventually he said, no, look,
Speaker 11: I've given up piracy. Piracy is wrong. I'm now going
Speaker 11: to reinvest all my profits of piracy and community building
Speaker 11: within Somalia, etc. And so then the Belgian Ministry of
Speaker 11: Justice sent pretended to be a Belgian film industry rep
Speaker 11: and invited him to Belgium to consult on a documentary
Speaker 11: about Somali piracy, which he then for some reason accepted
Speaker 11: the invitation and flew to Belgium, where he was promptly
Speaker 11: arrested for hostage taking of this Belgian ship. What had
Speaker 11: Earth possessed him to think that that was a legitimate invitation,
Speaker 11: I'll never know. And we've also had similar ones where
Speaker 11: a pirate negotiator was invited to the US under the
Speaker 11: guise of attending an education conference and was then arrested
Speaker 11: for piracy as well. So you see a few weird
Speaker 11: ones like that come up around piracy prosecutions where they
Speaker 11: finally get enough evidence to prosecute one of the people
Speaker 11: in charge and concoct these wild schemes to get them
Speaker 11: out of Somalia into a jurisdiction where they can arrest them.
Speaker 3: That's so interesting, isn't it. Tams and Page, who's like
Speaker 3: an expert in this area.
Speaker 2: And from taking universe, but based on camera.
Speaker 3: Incredible and community building. That says to me, water slide?
Speaker 3: So was it piracy or just common theft?
Speaker 2: Brad? I think it's got to be twelve miles out.
Speaker 4: You know, you can be kind of sailing in and
Speaker 4: out of international waters and all of a sudden it's
Speaker 4: just last weeking.
Speaker 2: Now it's piracy, last wening piracy.
Speaker 3: Do they have a compass to work that out. We
Speaker 3: don't want to be pirates, would rather be thieves. And
Speaker 3: I do question, Like she said that the Somali pirates
Speaker 3: would know what a water slide is. I don't know
Speaker 3: if they would, you reckon, they'd look at it and go,
Speaker 3: we could use this for irrigation or something.
Speaker 2: Well, look, I don't know. You can you can buy
Speaker 2: a lamp at Ikea and look at it in the
Speaker 2: box and you think, no way is that lamp? Yes,
Speaker 2: no way in the world is that lamp. You wouldn't
Speaker 2: look at it, you just I reckon. You think there's weapons.
Speaker 3: Well, so you look at the fiberglass bits and the
Speaker 3: metal and go, what what is this now?
Speaker 4: Well you could you know, even if you could picture
Speaker 4: it in your mind, you go, you could launch like
Speaker 4: a big rock down here.
Speaker 3: Turning into a rock launcher. Not a rocket launcher, No
Speaker 3: rock launcher. Well that's the end of the episode. And
Speaker 3: so basically we're leaving you with stuff's being stolen. What's
Speaker 3: going to happen is Mound and Eyes are going to
Speaker 3: get their water slide. You'll find out next episode.
Speaker 7: Than you are right, the goalpost just kept getting further
Speaker 7: and further away.
Speaker 10: Two big trucks arrived with these containers on the back.
Speaker 7: When I got in there, it's pitch black. You can't
Speaker 7: see anything.
Speaker 1: Slippery Slope a true crime podcast about Mount iSER and
Speaker 1: the missing water Slide with Dave O'Neill and Bradoaks.
Speaker 3: Slippery Slope is written and hosted by Dave O'Neill and Bradoaks.
Speaker 3: Original music created by Itinerant Productions. Cheer their website. There's
Speaker 3: some great stuff there ww dot Itinerantproduction dot com. Editing
Speaker 3: by Courtney Carthy, published by Neeli Media. Thank you for
Speaker 3: all the guests involved in the making of Slippery Slope,
Speaker 3: particularly the people of Mount Isa. For information, to check
Speaker 3: out the episode notes or at nearly dot com. Dot you,
Speaker 3: and thanks again to the people of Mountier.