Two news stories, days apart demonstrate, at least to me, why the current efforts to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia are doomed to fail. We posted previously how the tanker MV Moscow University was recaptured from pirates by Russian special forces involving the close cooperation of the ship’s crew and military personnel. When the pirates boarded the ship, the ship’s officers and crew disabled the engines and locked themselves in a shipboard safe room, with supplies and communications. Russian special forces boarded the ship by helicopter, captured the pirates and freed the ship with no loss of life to the crew or the Russian commandos, though there were causalities reported among the pirates. The entire operation went according to plan.
Then it was reported a few days later that the Russians were releasing the pirates because they had no legal grounds to prosecute them. They had legal grounds to engage in a firefight but apparently not to take the pirates to court in Moscow.
As long as the rewards of piracy far outweigh the risks, there will only be more and more heavily armed young men in boats eager to attack shipping. A policy of “catch and release” works far better with trout than with pirates.
Captured pirates who seized Russian tanker are freed
The tanker was freed and its captors detained after they surrendered on Thursday following a gunbattle with forces aboard a Russian warship that killed one pirate, according to Russian authorities.
“In the absence of necessary legal agreements, it was impossible to bring these pirates to justice,” a senior Russian Defence Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters by telephone.
“A decision was adopted to set them free aboard one of the small vessels they themselves had used to attack the Moscow University tanker,” the official said, adding that the ministry had been unable to establish the pirates’ citizenship.
Earlier, Russian investigators said they were Somali and that they would be brought to Moscow for prosecution.
The international community has become increasingly frustrated with the murky legal arena surrounding piracy.
Somalia lacks the legal infrastructure to support trials, and captured pirates are often released because of disagreements over which country should try them.
Last month the U.N. Security Council, on Russia’s initiative, suggested creating special piracy courts to plug a gap in the world response to the costly attacks on merchant ships off the lawless Somali coast.
“It is necessary to look for ways to try pirates with the help of international judicial mechanisms,” the Interfax news agency quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Igor Lyakin-Frolov as saying on Friday.
The only way to beat the problem is to address the roots of it, which are the deep poverty in Somalia and the absence of a working central government in the Horn of Africe. Catching, prosecuting and jailing the pirates will only alleviate the symptoms, not cure the disease.
I agree that the only long terms solution is to address the underlying tragedy of Somalia. The problem is that the current policy of not arresting and trying pirates is only encouraging then and adding to their number.
In the mean time, merchant seaman continue to be held hostage under horrible conditions. Until the underlying disease is addressed, alleviating the symptoms is not a bad option.
To update this story; the Russian government is now reporting that they believe that the remaining pirates may be dead since they did not reach land and contact with their craft was “lost” about an hour after leaving the ship.
My guess is they were already dead or were released in a boat unfit for sea. Either way, the Russians have presented a solution that no one else seems to want to consider; that piracy on the high seas is punishable by immediate execution.
It is tragic that the nations involved lack the requisite political will to support an international tribunal to try the pirates. Summary execution has its downsides, both for the pirates and potentially their hostages.
Agreed. There needs to be a cocerted effort to both try the pirates in some sort of legal tribunal and at the same time, the oppressive situation that causes this problem needs to be addressed. You would think this is tailor made for the UN, wouldn’t you ?
The UN works, so does the World Court. In theory it might be a special tribunal authorized under the Law of the Sea. The only thing absolutely lacking is the political will to get it done.
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The answer is simple.
KILL THEM!
The big problem is that the international laws used to deal with piracy were revoked following WWII, creating a legal limbo in which law abiding nations are powerless to act. What is needed most is to reestablish the status of piracy as hostis humani generis (Latin for “enemy of mankind”) and give formal naval units the necessary legal tools and jurisdiction to carry out arrests, followed by a rapid trial and punishment at sea.
The later part, punishment at sea, is particularly important to prevent a process of hostage taking and exchange for captured pirates from being instituted. The EU and humanitarian groups may object, but given their historic total lack of success in dealing with pirates, this outlook should be considered discredited at this time.