Pirates as unwilling heroes?

If you do a stupid thing for all the wrong reasons, but the consequences of your actions prevent a much greater tragedy, are you a hero?

Here I posted about the MV Iran Denayat and how the Somali pirates that had hijacked the ship were all succumbing to a 'weird' affliction that had all the symptoms of radiation poisoning.

These are the facts as we know them:

the MV Iran Denayat (source)

• The tanker MV Iran Denayat is a tanker registered with the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL)
• IRISL is an Iranian state-owned company
• August 21, 2008 Somali pirate speedboats hijacked the MV Iran Denayat around the Gulf of Aden, on it's way to the Suez Canal and according to it's shipping manifest carrying a cargo of "42,500 tons of iron ore and "industrial products" purchased by a German client" to be unloaded in Rotterdam.
• "Within a period of three days, those pirates who had boarded the ship and opened the cargo container with its gritty sand-like contents, all developed strange health complications, to include serious skin burns and loss of hair. And within two weeks, sixteen of the pirates subsequently died, either on the ship or on shore." (link)
• IRISL was designated by the US Government on 10 September, 2008 for nuclear "Proliferation Activities"
  









Radioactive Tangent: The difference between a nuclear bomb and a "dirty bomb" is that the former actually creates a nuclear explosion, and the latter uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material.



It is now alleged that the ship was never going to go to Rotterdam. Apparently it was going to moor somewhere in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Israel, and blow up as one huge, ship sized dirty bomb just in time for the jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, spreading radioactive sand all across Israel and anyhwere else the wind conditions would have carried it. The sand is clearly lethal as our pirate friends have discovered, so any doubt as to the intentions of the ship's crew should be dissolving like sand in the wind.

Otherwise, what other possible use could you have for shipping poisonous (radioactive?) sand halfway across the world?


Link:
IRGC inc