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A group of pirates who fortify themselves with a cocktail of gin and cocaine in a bid to ward off bad spirits have taken out an “uncountable” number of victims during their hijacks.
That’s the claim of the group’s leader, who boasts that despite the regular gun battles they have with security forces, they’ve lost only one of their own men over the past five or six years.
The pirate, who calls himself “Black Devil, alias Aku Omega Five”, says he has 45 men in his gang, and they use speedboats to attack foreign vessels off the coast of Nigeria.
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The group claims in a YouTube video that their targets are just the foreign oil companies who exploit their country and plunder their resources without giving anything back to the local community.
But they rely on their cocktail of “gin and coke” to keep them safe from bad spirits, and even the documentary maker is sprayed with the potion before he's allowed inside their camp.
Black Devil – whose camp is protected by men armed with guns and machetes – estimates that if there are 20 men defending a boat, the pirates will “maybe kill three, kill five, take their guns. That is part of my job”.
As soon as they’ve won the initial battle, he and his men will board the ship and demand to see the captain. As well as taking hostages for ransom, they’ll also demand to know if there’s any cash on board.
And the captain is left in little doubt about what the options are.
Black Devil said: “I’ll ask, ‘How much do you have on board? If you don’t want to release the money I’m sorry for you [but] you go to hell. Blow off your head’.”
The pirates seem to know which hostages will prove most valuable to them. They tend to ignore foreign workers from countries such as India and the Philippines because they don’t generate decent ransom payments.
Instead, they pinpoint Westerners – and Black Devil mentions Americans and the French in particular.
The cash the gang raises from the piracy is used to buy ammunition and more boats for their ongoing operations, and the rest is used to take care of their families.
“We don't have jobs. That is why we are doing this dirty job,” Back Devil told the Free Doc Bites channel. “You come to exploit [us] here and you don't want to employ [us].
“That is why that is the major reason why we are doing this. You don't want to employ us and you are exploiting us.
“I have five children. Two are in university and I don't have a job. How do I train them? How do I feed them? How do I pay my house rent?”
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