Britain lands 14 pirates in the Seychelles for prosecution

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A group of suspected pirates caught during a Royal Navy operation in the Indian Ocean will face prosecution in the Seychelles after the RFA Fort Victoria handed them over to Seychelles authorities.

The suspected Somali pirates were captured on January 13 by Royal Navy and Royal Marines teams embarked on the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) vessel Fort Victoria, which was taking part in NATO’s counter-piracy task force Operation Ocean Shield.

The suspected pirates, who were known to have been operating in the Indian Ocean, were intercepted on board a hijacked Yemeni fishing dhow. They were found to have a variety of pirate paraphernalia and weapons on board, including rocket-propelled grenades and hand-held grenades.
“We are very grateful to the Seychelles for their agreement to prosecute these suspected pirates,” said the UK’s Foreign Secretary, William Hague. “Their commitment to the fight against piracy has helped avoid a situation where these individuals were not held to account for their actions.”
“Today’s agreement on the transfer of alleged pirates demonstrates what can be achieved through international co-operation and commitment.”
“This has been a long four months of intensive counter-piracy operations during which time we have captured more than 30 pirates for prosecution and rescued 44 merchant mariners from the hands of the pirates,” said Captain Gerry Northwood, commander of the RFA Fort Victoria.
“This success has been echoed by other NATO units engaged in counter-piracy operations and the handover of these suspected pirates to the Seychelles authorities will contribute to ensuring the waters of the Indian Ocean become a safer place for all mariners.”

The Danish ship HDMS Absalon, another NATO ship conducting counter-piracy operations in the Indian Ocean, was also in the Seychelles to hand over four suspected pirates to the Seychelles authorities.

The HDMS Absalon on January 5 captured a pirate mother ship and arrested 25 suspected pirates and freed 14 hostages from Iran and Pakistan. However, the Seychelles refused to take all 25 pirates. Denmark had sought to send them to the Seychelles under a May 2011 agreement that was supposed to allow the Danish navy to hand over suspected pirates for prosecution in the Indian Ocean island country, but a Danish government official said last May’s agreement did not oblige the Seychelles to take pirates, but only to consider on a case-by-case basis whether its judicial system had the capacity to handle the cases.

Henry Bellingham, Britain’s Africa minister, recently told Reuters that Britain may put on trial and jail Somali pirates in the United Kingdom if its citizens are attacked at sea, but the government’s priority is to help Somalia boost its inadequate prison capacity.
“If pirates harm UK citizens, and there’s enough evidence, we have not ruled out those pirates being taken for detention and trial and then, if convicted, imprisonment in the UK,” Bellingham said. “If British crew members or naval personnel were harmed, of course we would consider it,” he said.

More than 1,000 pirates have been imprisoned in the past few years, a few of them tried and jailed in European countries and the United States.

Earlier last month, a group of British lawmakers urged the government to try pirates in Britain if no other country was willing to jail suspects captured by British ships.

Somali authorities say their prisons are overstretched and would not be able to cope with an increase in inmate numbers.

Bellingham, acknowledging difficulties in Somalia and neighbouring countries such as Kenya, which has taken in some suspects, said priority was given to helping Somalia cope with the problem.

He added that authorities in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, intended to detain all their suspects in their homeland in the long run.

Analysts say around 90 percent of pirates detained by naval forces are released without charge, often because of questions over which country has jurisdiction over them.

Western governments generally do not want to take them from the region to their own courts, though France in November began the first of four trials of Somali pirates in French courts.

In a few weeks time the UK will host the London Conference on Somalia, which will discuss how the international community can tackle the many problems faced by Somalia, including piracy.

According to the International Maritime Bureau, as of January 19 there have been 19 pirate attacks around the world this year, versus 439 last year. None of this year’s attacks have been successful, while 45 vessels were hijacked last year. Somali pirates have this year been responsible for seven attacks and they are presently holding nine vessels and 151 hostages.

NATO has contributed to the international counter-piracy effort off the Horn of Africa since December 2008. The mission has expanded from escorting UN and World Food Programme shipping under Operation Allied Provider and protecting merchant traffic in the Gulf of Aden under Operation Allied Protector. NATO has announced its continuing commitment to counter-piracy by extending Operation Ocean Shield to December 2012.