Escape pod treating/treated by player as hostile

[LinuxOnTheDesktop]

Dear all

I have the following AI code for an escape pod. Somehow the code seems to mark the pod's target as an attack target; the player ship's turrets started to fire on it. I want to avoid that firing; how?

scanForNearestMerchantman,
[. . .]
TARGET_FOUND = (
   setTargetToFoundTarget,
   setDestinationToTarget,
   "setDesiredRangeTo: 450.0",
   "setSpeedFactorTo: 1.0",
   performIntercept,