Somali pirates are ready to release a German-operated tanker, the Marida Marguerite, which they have held for eight months, after they were paid $5.5 million, a pirate leader said.
“We have just received $5,500,000 dollars this morning,” Khlaiif Dahir, a leader of the pirates in Gara’ad, a village in Somalia’s central Mudug region, said today in a telephone interview.
The 13,000-ton vessel was hijacked on May 8, 120 miles (190 kilometers) south of Salalah, Oman, the European Naval force said on May 8.





