Officials Fear Terror on High Seas

Sept. 10, 2003 — -- Piracy at sea, far from being a forgotten relic of the world's buccaneering past, is now a modern growth industry.

In the first half of this year, pirates attacked 234 ships, an increase of almost 40 percent over seaborne assaults reported last year to the International Maritime Bureau. What is more, pirates are becoming more violent and are adopting more sophisticated techniques — involving patrol boats, mother ships, modern communications and automatic weapons.

The trend worries not only ship owners, crews and insurers, who pay the price; it is becoming a major concern to security officials and navies from Singapore to San Francisco. The reason: The pirates' advanced methods provide a potential model to international terrorists seeking so-called soft targets for attacks that could take thousands of lives, cripple world trade and provide a powerful symbol of destructiveness.

An ABCNEWS investigation has uncovered the increasing fears in shipping and security circles that armed terrorists may, as pirates already do, seize ships carrying liquid natural gas, chemicals or oil. But, rather than rob a ship, they could transform it into what a sea captain in Malaysia, Raja Kumar, calls "a floating bomb."

Detonating a tanker in a port city like Singapore, Galveston, Texas, or Boston would wreak havoc, take thousands of lives and damage the environment for years to come.

"The worrying trend is the possibility that some of these attacks are linked to international terrorists," said Tony Tan, the deputy prime minister of Singapore.

Tan, who is also Singapore's chief coordinator of security and defense affairs, said he fears the city-state's container port — one of the largest in the world — could be a specific target.

Last year, Singaporean police arrested Muslim suspects who had zeroed in on an American warship, locales used by American servicemen and foreign embassies on surveillance videotapes discovered in a safe house in Afghanistan.