It was hard to miss Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class Ahmed El Haroun among the throngs of uniformed sailors shuttling between sessions at the Surface Navy Association’s annual conference near Washington.
Over his enlisted “cracker jack” dress blues, El Haroun wore an elaborately knotted white boatswain’s mate’s lanyard, a traditional decoration he’d made himself over the course of his first deployment to the Middle East onboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer Mason — one launched shortly after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel unleashed chaos in the region.
El Haroun, 38, received one of the association’s Surface Warfare Operational Excellence Awards for his gutsy role in responding to a Somali pirate attack on a commercial tanker in the Gulf of Aden.
While Mason’s intervention in the tanker’s attempted seizure and capture of the five pirates made headlines at the time, El Haroun’s role in the rescue — one informed by his Egyptian heritage and knowledge of the pirates’ language and Middle Eastern culture — has never before been made public.
Now stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, El Haroun recently spoke with Military Times about the incident, during which he became the Navy’s primary contact point with the pirates and showed, as his award citation put it, “unparalleled courage” and “leadership under fire” in helping to capture the pirates and secure the release of 22 hostages onboard the tanker.
El Haroun, who grew up in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, traveled to the U.S. as an adult with his wife, an American Navy veteran. When their first child, born in 2016, was treated by Navy doctors at Balboa Naval Medical Center in San Diego for a life-threatening respiratory infection, El Haroun was deeply moved.
“After that, I wanted to do something back,” El Haroun said. “I wanted to say thank you for the country, for everything they did for me and for my family.”
When his wife suggested he join the Navy, he was uncertain at first.
“And I said, ‘What? Come on,’” he recalled. “I just came from Egypt. Like, they’re not gonna accept me.”
But the idea took hold, and he decided to go for it. Though El Haroun had, he said, earned multiple degrees in Egypt, he wasn’t yet a U.S. citizen. So, he pursued an enlisted path into the Navy, sure from the start he wanted to be a boatswain’s mate, a workhorse rating that requires physical acumen and expertise in seamanship.
“I love to work with my hands; I love to build a team,” he recalled. “This was exactly what I want.”
As El Haroun and his crew members trained in Mason’s home station of Mayport, Florida, news broke of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks, in which nearly 1,200 people, most civilians, were killed and approximately 250 more taken hostage.
The ship sailed that same month in what would end up being a 263-day deployment in and around the Red Sea. El Haroun said he knew things might get sporty, and as one of the older sailors of his rank in the crew, he took it upon himself to prepare for the worst.
“I talked to my chain of command: ‘I will order a lot of repair parts before deployment and keep them with me. And if something happens, I will actually repair it immediately, instead of actually waiting for the part to [arrive],’” he recalled.
During the deployment, he said, Mason’s crew was able to complete all repairs within 24 hours.
Then came Nov. 24, 2023, the day pirates attempted to hijack the chemical tanker M/V Central Park in the Gulf of Aden.
Mason was undergoing a multi-day replenishment mission near Djibouti when the ship’s skipper, Cmdr. Justin Smith, was informed about the attack. The crew wasn’t immediately briefed on the situation, but the ship set course for the tanker’s location, cruising nearly at full speed — around 29 knots, or 33 miles per hour, El Haroun recalled.
As the ship covered the distance, the boatswain’s mate got a call from his department head asking if he spoke Arabic. El Haroun answered that he spoke every dialect of the language and had served as the command’s translator.
Immediately, he was shifted to a new role in Mason’s Visit, Board, Search and Seizure (VBSS) team — one that ensured he’d be in direct confrontation with the pirates.
As the ship neared the tanker, El Haroun was given a megaphone. He saw the Somali pirates in a small wooden boat and delivered the commands in Arabic.
“You’re hearing the U.S. Navy,” he said. “Stop your engines. Stand by for further instruction.”
The pirates ignored the order and continued attempting to board the tanker, El Haroun said. Despite carrying no weapon, El Haroun suspected the pirates, who he believed to be armed, would respond to a show of bravado rather than diplomacy.
“In the Middle East, if you’re aggressive, if you put them in the [subordinate] position, they will listen to you,” he said.
Approaching the pirate’s vessel onboard one of Mason’s rigid-hulled inflatable boats (RHIBs), El Haroun said he kept going on the megaphone, positioning himself at the front of the small boat and yelling at the pirates to keep them disoriented and off-balance. He put himself between the pirates and the rest of his crew members, he said, to force them to have to interact with him.
Once the wooden boat had been cleared of weapons and the pirates had been apprehended, El Haroun said they looked decidedly less menacing.
Two, he said, were in their teens or early 20s; one was in his mid-20s; and two were in their 40s or 50s. Though the pirates had reason to be more afraid of the VBSS team than the sailors were of them, El Haroun said his first concern remained keeping the Mason’s crew safe.
When the captured pirates boarded Mason, he had them face out to sea, ensuring they’d be unable to make eye contact with any crew members. Ultimately, El Haroun said, they were in confinement on Mason for 30 days before U.S. Marines took them to Djibouti for eventual return to Somalia. He continued to act as their translator for communication and interrogation the entire time.
During the rescue, El Haroun and his teammates also had a close encounter with another threat that was an ever-present part of their deployment: incoming missiles, likely fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen. With the RHIB transporting pirates back to the ship, he said, incoming missiles added an almost surreal intensity.
In his everyday role as boatswain’s mate, El Haroun said, he tried to help sailors who were losing sleep over the regular missile attacks on the ship. A good day’s work apprehending pirates, meanwhile, provided an exclamation point to an intense deployment in the Red Sea.
“It was a great experience,” he said. “I feel … me and my team played a big role in saving a whole tanker and a whole crew. It feels … like an honor. I’m proud of what me and my team actually did.”
With what he aims to be many years of a military career ahead of him, El Haroun said he’s hoping to become an intelligence officer, putting his Arabic skills and prior experience to work for the Navy.
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