Royal Navy may have to set pirates free
The Royal Navy may be forced to release suspected pirates captured in the Indian Ocean because no country is willing to prosecute them.
28 Comments
Thursday 19 January 2012
A team of Royal Marines arrested 14 Somalis on a hijacked fishing boat on Saturday and found rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles and explosives.
Kenya and the Seychelles have tried suspected pirates in the past but both have refused to take the latest captives because their court systems are swamped.
The men caught on Saturday joined two other suspected pirates already under arrest on a second Royal Navy vessel. The American, Danish and Spanish navies are between them holding a further 46 men captured during anti-piracy patrols over the last six weeks.
British officials are putting “intense pressure” on Kenya to accept the most recent captives, amid fears of warships turning into “floating prisons”, according to senior sources in Nairobi. One alternative would be to try the men in Britain, experts say, but there is little appetite for it because of the cost and the fear that the pirates would later seek asylum.
The only remaining option is to release them back on to the beaches of Somalia, said Alan Cole, anti-piracy co-ordinator with the United Nations office on drugs and crime in Nairobi. Whitehall sources confirmed that this was one of the few options available.
“It is extremely important that the regional countries do everything they can to take these pirates or it gives the impression that they are immune from prosecution,” said Mr Cole.
Britain is spending more than £11 million to refurbish prisons and courts in Kenya, the Seychelles and northern Somalia but the work is not yet complete.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence in London said: “The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is actively pursuing options for regional prosecution.”
Posts
