Nairobi - From parachuted bundles of dollar bills to suitcases of cash transiting through east African capitals, there are many ways to deliver ransoms to Somalia's modern-day buccaneers.
The ransom handover is the most critical time in the hijacking of a ship; the single moment when the pirates, but also the crew, are at their most vulnerable.
On Tuesday, pirates who had been holding the Spanish tuna trawler Alakrana said they were about to release it after receiving four million dollars and its crew of 36 but were in the process of "checking the money".
When the giant Saudi tanker Sirius Star - hijacked in 2008 by members of the same group - was released in January, the crisis ended fatally for six pirates who couldn't swim when their boat sank on the way back to shore.
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"The small boat was overloaded and going too fast... The survivors told us they were afraid some foreign navies would attempt to catch them," the leader of the pirate group, Mohammed Said, told AFP.
According to coastal residents, one of the bodies of the pirates washed up on the beach with around 150 000 dollars stuffed into his pockets.
Pirates initially said three million dollars were paid but sources close to the negotiations said a total of close to eight million dollars was paid to various people to secure the ship's safe release.
Ransoms have often been parachuted by small aircraft directly onto the hijacked vessel's deck.
Always paid in cash to avoid modern transaction monitoring, ransoms can also be delivered by agents, generally through middlemen, either in Somalia or abroad, notably in Nairobi, Djibouti or Dubai.
When the luxury French yacht Le Ponant was hijacked by pirates last year, an estimated 1,2 million dollars were delivered to secure the ship's release, according to sources close to the pirates.
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