By Martina Fuchs
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
The breakaway enclave of Somaliland and semi-autonomous Puntland, itself a centre of piracy, are seen as relatively stable compared with the rest of the Horn of Africa country, where a weak interim government is battling Islamist insurgents.
"In the next to weeks, the construction of the prison in Bosaso and Garowe will start, and also in Somaliland," Saeed Mohamed Rage, Puntland's minister of marine transport, ports and counter-piracy, told Reuters.
Pirates based in Somalia have turned busy shipping lanes off the coast of the conflict-wrecked state into some of the most perilous waters on Earth and cost the world billions of dollars.
The UN Security Council in April backed the idea of special courts to try captured Somali pirates but put off a decision on thorny details such as where to locate them.
The Puntland prisons would enable the establishment of two courts in Bosaso and Garowe to try pirates and will be set up in the next 3-4 months, Rage said in an interview in Dubai.
There were now more than 260 pirate inmates in Puntland's prisons, he said. Asked about who will fund the prisons, he said: "The European Union will fund, in collaboration with Norway, and also mostly the U.K.."
PUNTLAND-SEYCHELLES ACCORD
Puntland borders on Somaliland to its west, the Gulf of Aden to the north and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. The capital is Garowe, but commerce and business is concentrated in the port city of Bosaso.
On Monday, Puntland signed an agreement with the Seychelles on the repatriation and transfer of sentenced pirates.
With Somalia lacking legal infrastructure, Kenya and the Seychelles have prosecuted dozens of suspects handed over by foreign navies. But both say they would have difficulties coping if all the seized pirates were sent to them.
A Russian-drafted UN resolution also urged all countries to criminalise piracy, saying the crime could be prosecuted anywhere no matter where it was committed, and called on states and organisations to fund prisons in Somaliland and Puntland.
Rage said attacks by pirates were increasing. "It is really every day. It was supposed to decrease, but every day there is another active operation because of the payment rise and the payment of ransom. We have to get them all," Rage said.
"We have to stop the payment of ransom, it will accelerate the pirates, their authority, and they will become another government," he said. "The solution is not on the international community, but on the Somalis."
At the beginning of the month, pirates were holding at least 29 vessels, ranging from fishing boats to tankers, holding their crews hostage and demanding multi-million-dollar ransoms.
The hijacking of ships near the coast of Somalia, where an Islamist insurgency and lawlessness has created a pirate safe haven, has cost the shipping industry millions of dollars.