Monday, October 25, 2010
They were accused of hijacking 'Dhafir' and 'Jawad,' two Yemeni boats, and using them in piracy operations against Yemeni and foreign ships in the international and Yemeni territorial waters.
The court on Sunday reviewed the evidence presented by the prosecution against the suspects, including their confessions made during interrogations. After the indictments were read out, the defendants denied the charges.
The suspected corsairs were arrested in May last by the Yemeni Navy in an operation that released a Yemeni fishing boat and its crew they had hijacked four days earlier near the island of Socotra in the Gulf of Aden.
Weapons including machine guns and two RPG launchers were recovered from the captured pirates, who now faces death penalty if convicted. The next hearing in the case has been set for November 14.
A Yemeni court in capital Sanaa had sentenced six Somali pirates to death and six others to ten years in prison in May last on being found guilty of hijacking a Yemeni oil tanker in April last year and killing two of its crew members.
The following day, a court in the city of Aden sentenced ten other Somali pirates to ten-year prison terms for attempting to hijack a cargo vessel in Yemen's territorial waters.
The Somali coast, particularity the Gulf of Aden, has been affected by increased piracy in recent years. More than 160 pirate attacks have been reported in the waters off Somalia since the beginning of last year. Generally, the crew and the vessels are returned unharmed on receiving the demanded ransom.
Pirate attacks off the Somali coast have continued despite the presence of several warships deployed by Navies of the NATO, the European Union, Russia, China, South Korea and India in the region to protect cargo and cruise ships against piracy.
Recently, the EU force deployed in the region as part of the international anti-piracy mission announced that it was extending the area covered by its current operations off the coast of Somalia in an effort to counter the pirates' tactics of shifting operations into new areas to avoid detection.
The U.N. Security Council has approved four resolutions since June to promote international efforts in fighting the escalating sea piracy off Somalia, authorizing countries involved in anti-piracy operations to conduct land and air attacks on Somali pirates after obtaining prior permission from the interim Somali government.
by RTT Staff Writer
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