Pirate attack off Suriname leaves at least a dozen missing, feared dead

At least a dozen fishermen from Guyana are missing, feared dead, after a pirate attack off the coast of neighboring Suriname last week that Guyana’s president called a “massacre” on Thursday, Reuters reported. Three bodies have been brought to shore and while it is initially suspected that one is the remains of 27-year-old Dinesh ‘Vicky’ Persaud, one of the missing fishermen, family members confirmed from Suriname yesterday that they have not identified

the body as yet. Armogan stated, “this is a very tragic time for the relatives of these missing men and this will also put a dent on other people wanting to go out to go fish as well”. Some of the fishermen who remain missing were forced into the sea with weights tied to their legs, according to reports from the survivors. Small-scale piracy has long been a fact of life along the largely undeveloped coasts of Suriname and Guyana, which lie on the northeastern shoulder of South America. “It is almost certain that it is one of the missing because the body was discovered near the place where the boats were attacked,” said Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Slijngard, Director of the National Coordination Centre for Disaster Management (NCCR) on local radio. The captain, a Guyanese whose name was given as ‘Pattar’, and who survived the gruesome assault, told Suriname police that he saw how the hijackers beat the crew members, who were already wounded and in the water, with bamboo sticks on their heads.
The government of Guyana reports that pirates attacked fishermen off the coast of neighboring Suriname.