Tuesday, December 16, 2008
By Sylvia Westall
Scores of Somali pirate attacks this year have driven up shipping insurance costs, triggered millions of dollars in ransom payments and left about a dozen ships with nearly 300 hostages still in pirate hands. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said police from Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania or Yemen could patrol waters off the coast of Somalia as "ship riders" and arrest pirates in the name of their country, increasing their chances of a trial.
"Pirates cannot be keel-hauled or forced to walk the plank, nor should they be dumped off the Somali coast. They need to be brought to justice," UNODC head Antonio Maria Costa said.
Police officers from the region could board foreign warships that have been actively hunting pirates or protecting the waters off the coast of Somalia, he said. The police could be given special legal status to arrest pirates if the countries that own the warships sign an accord with the officers' home countries.
SHIP RIDERS
The ship rider technique, already used to combat drug trafficking in the Caribbean, is more realistic than putting pirates on trial in their home country since Somalia's criminal justice system is in tatters, Costa said in a statement.
Countries such as Liberia, Panama and the Marshall Islands, where many of the ships that have been seized by pirates are registered, are not interested in handling crimes committed thousands of miles away either, Costa added.
Trials in the region would also be better than staging them in the countries whose ships captured them, such as India, the United States or European Union states, he said.
"(In these countries) there are strict international standards about protecting human rights and handing over suspects within a short period of time," said Costa.
As well as battling pirates at sea, regional authorities need to go after them on the land by dismantling their costal bases and clamping down on their financing.
"Unlike buccaneers of old, Somali mafias are not burying their booty in the sand," Costa said, adding:
"While some transactions are made in cash or the hawala system, pirates are increasingly working through intermediaries in financial centres. This is where we need to hit them." Hawala is an informal system of financial transactions used in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Costa also recommended that shippers and insurance companies not
pay ransoms as this heightened the motivation to commit piracy.
SOURCE: Reuters, Tuesday, December 16, 2008