Stowaways threatened terrified cargo ship captain while chucking poo at his sailors

Stowaways threatened terrified cargo ship captain while chucking poo atzoe his sailors
Zoe Drewett Oct 2019 https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/02/stowaways-threatened-terrified-cargo-ship...

The Grande Tema ship off the Essex coast after the alleged hijack attempt (Picture: Stephen Huntley)M/small>
Four men attempting to flee Nigeria and come to the UK tried to hijack a 78,000-ton cargo ship by throwing poo at its sailors, a court heard.

Suspected pirates Samuel Jolumi, 27, Ishola Sunday, 28, Toheeb Popoola, 27, and Joberto McGee, 20, were accused of forcing the terrified captain of the Italian merchant ship to repeat the threats they were making to the coastguard.

They did that by hurling their own faeces at his crew, jurors at the Old Bailey were told.

The men illegally boarded the Grande Tema on its journey from Lagos to Tilbury in Essex and were only discovered by captain Antonio Raggi and his crew after several days in hiding.

The captain placed them into quarantine but they broke free five days later, jurors heard.

Roaming the deck with litre-bottles of their own urine, the gang charged at the window separating them from the crew, who had barricaded themselves in the bridge of the ship.

It wasn’t until fourteen hours after the initial attempt to hijack the ship that the Special Boat Services landed on deck at 10.55pm on 21 December, 2018, and detained the migrants.

The Old Bailey heard rescue teams found the men had cut themselves to draw diseased blood with which to infect the sailors.

The alleged stowaways were armed with metal and wooden poles when they sent threatening messages to the captain ordering him to sail them to the UK.

Captain Raggi was forced to trigger an unprecedented ‘distress level’ security alert in response the drama which was ‘the first of its kind’ to be dealt with by maritime security.

He called Her Majesty’s Coastguard, Sea Rescue, and finally the military to seek help and relay messages being sent by the stowaways.

The Nigerians threw handwritten notes at the captain demanding he hand them over to mainland authorities so that they could claim asylum.

Tony Badenoch, prosecuting, told jurors the captain kept in ‘constant contact’ with the coastguard during the alleged hijacking saying ‘we cannot arrange mapping with these stowaways they are dangerous’.

The prosecutor said: ‘Their threats were taken very seriously indeed and some crew members were really scared.

‘It was the first instance of this kind that the Maritime Operations Controllers had dealt with in service.

‘At 8.46am the vessel has activated the ship security alarm which means I believe there is grave and imminent danger to the ship’s crew – from four stowaways, suspected clandestines.

‘A transcript of the communications from ship to coastguard shows Captain Raggi explaining it’s too dangerous to pass a telephone to them because he had to open the door to pass the telephone to him.

‘The message which was written by defendants read: “Where is the pilot because we need to come down we are not crew. If you don’t come to port by 10 o’clock we don’t come down I swear to God big problem for the ship”.’

Mr Badenoch said: ‘That was the message given to Captain Raggi while he was speaking to the defendants on the one hand and the UK mainland authorities in the other.’

All four defendants, of no fixed address, deny attempting to hijack the ship and making threats to kill.

The trial continues.