Next week, a court in the US is due to begin hearing the case against an alleged Somali pirate leader who, if found guilty, faces spending the rest of his life in prison.Mohammad Saaili Shibin is accused of piracy and related crimes for his part in the hijacking of a yacht which ended in the death of the four Americans on board as US naval forces approached.Six of the gang that hijacked the yacht and were subsequently captured “on the high seas” have already received life sentences, while eight others are either awaiting sentencing or trials involving charges of murder. All these carried out the actual hijacking but Shibin remained throughout on land, allegedly checking on the Internet details of the hostages and their families in a bid to gauge their wealth and how much they might be able to pay in ransom.
Shibin was captured by Somali Government forces in April and handed over to agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who escorted him to the US to face trial. At the time, the FBI noted it was the first time the US “had captured and charged an alleged pirate in a leadership role – a hostage negotiator who operated in Somalia.” It hoped the arrest and indictments – on piracy, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and use of a destructive device during a crime of violence – would “send a strong message to all pirates that they are not beyond the reach of the FBI, whether they board the ships or remain onshore in Somalia”.
That the US will act with force against pirates who attack its own ships or citizens few would doubt, but in this case the FBI has also charged Shibin in connection with the hijacking in May last year of the German-operated tanker Marida Marguerite whose 22-strong crew was composed of 19 Indians, two Bangladeshis and a Ukrainian. The only American connection is that the ship, released in December after a ransom was paid, is flagged in the Marshall Islands, the security and defence of which the US has full authority and responsibility for.
While the FBI warned pirates if they hijacked an American ship they would be caught and faced “severe consequences in an American courtroom”, the case against Shibin also says he “participated in crimes against the international community and justice for those crimes stops at no national boundary”. In the case of the tanker, Shibin, said to have earned USD 30-50,000 for his role, is alleged to have negotiated the ransom partly while on the ship after it had been taken to Somalia and, with others, to have used torture to exact a higher ransom, although it is unclear whether he personally tortured the crew.
While the US may have both the resolve and the resources to catch and punish those pirates and their bosses it decides warrant such extra-territorial action, other countries may lack one or both. Over 1,000 pirates, actual and alleged, have been prosecuted or are awaiting prosecution in 20 countries, but they are those apprehended in the act, rather than those like Shibin who direct the hijackings and conduct ransom negotiations.
Last month the UN Secretary-General reported that several pirate leaders have been identified and they face at least restrictions on their movements, an embargo on sale of arms and outboard motors and the freezing of overseas funds, while “pirate militias and their facilitators, financiers, negotiators, active supporters and beneficiaries” are being investigated.
A “large number” of suspected pirates, however, are still not being prosecuted, the UN Secretary-General explained, for a variety of reasons that include failure to identify a jurisdiction able and willing to prosecute and lack of evidence.
The vital gathering and sharing of information that can lead to successful prosecutions, whether they are the ones boarding ships or negotiating ransoms ashore, is also set to improve following the approval last month by Interpol member-countries of the international crime agency’s maritime piracy global database due to become fully available next year.
Gathering the evidence, however, is not as simple as it might seem on popular television series. One of the problems, Interpol’s legal counsel has recently pointed out, is that it is not what navies normally do, while law-enforcement agencies – belatedly involved in the counter-piracy efforts – are dealing with a somewhat unusual “crime scene”. Navies also have to overcome, he added, a traditional reluctance to share what might otherwise be regarded as classified information.
Seafarers are being asked to play their part in evidence-gathering but a separate report* by a NATO internal department (the Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre) stressed the need for navies to improve their appreciation of the realities on board merchant ships, pointing out the leanness of crewing and the operational demands on seafarers leave them little time and energy to devote to the stream of piracy-related information they receive.
A further misconception lies in the belief among naval personnel that their counterparts in merchant shipping are as high-tech and wired-up as they are. “Most merchant ships do not have reliable, inexpensive Internet connections to pull information from websites and lack free time to browse for information” the report noted. “Few shipping companies have operations centres which can seek out information and push it to their ships.”
The report also revealed Masters’ confusion over who “is in charge” of counter-piracy and whom they should call for help. It concedes there are “myriad” points of contact and, with little likelihood of a single, unified command on counter-piracy to present “a simple common face to merchant mariners”, it admitted that, while there is “unity of purpose” among the different organisations and every effort to co-operate and co-ordinate, “confusion will still exist”.
Seafarers may take some comfort from the news pirate bosses are within the law’s long reach and from the navy waking up to the reality of their working lives, but as long as ships continue to be hijacked and hostages cruelly treated will think it is all taking far too long.
Source: Bimco
Shibin was captured by Somali Government forces in April and handed over to agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who escorted him to the US to face trial. At the time, the FBI noted it was the first time the US “had captured and charged an alleged pirate in a leadership role – a hostage negotiator who operated in Somalia.” It hoped the arrest and indictments – on piracy, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and use of a destructive device during a crime of violence – would “send a strong message to all pirates that they are not beyond the reach of the FBI, whether they board the ships or remain onshore in Somalia”.
That the US will act with force against pirates who attack its own ships or citizens few would doubt, but in this case the FBI has also charged Shibin in connection with the hijacking in May last year of the German-operated tanker Marida Marguerite whose 22-strong crew was composed of 19 Indians, two Bangladeshis and a Ukrainian. The only American connection is that the ship, released in December after a ransom was paid, is flagged in the Marshall Islands, the security and defence of which the US has full authority and responsibility for.
While the FBI warned pirates if they hijacked an American ship they would be caught and faced “severe consequences in an American courtroom”, the case against Shibin also says he “participated in crimes against the international community and justice for those crimes stops at no national boundary”. In the case of the tanker, Shibin, said to have earned USD 30-50,000 for his role, is alleged to have negotiated the ransom partly while on the ship after it had been taken to Somalia and, with others, to have used torture to exact a higher ransom, although it is unclear whether he personally tortured the crew.
While the US may have both the resolve and the resources to catch and punish those pirates and their bosses it decides warrant such extra-territorial action, other countries may lack one or both. Over 1,000 pirates, actual and alleged, have been prosecuted or are awaiting prosecution in 20 countries, but they are those apprehended in the act, rather than those like Shibin who direct the hijackings and conduct ransom negotiations.
Last month the UN Secretary-General reported that several pirate leaders have been identified and they face at least restrictions on their movements, an embargo on sale of arms and outboard motors and the freezing of overseas funds, while “pirate militias and their facilitators, financiers, negotiators, active supporters and beneficiaries” are being investigated.
A “large number” of suspected pirates, however, are still not being prosecuted, the UN Secretary-General explained, for a variety of reasons that include failure to identify a jurisdiction able and willing to prosecute and lack of evidence.
The vital gathering and sharing of information that can lead to successful prosecutions, whether they are the ones boarding ships or negotiating ransoms ashore, is also set to improve following the approval last month by Interpol member-countries of the international crime agency’s maritime piracy global database due to become fully available next year.
Gathering the evidence, however, is not as simple as it might seem on popular television series. One of the problems, Interpol’s legal counsel has recently pointed out, is that it is not what navies normally do, while law-enforcement agencies – belatedly involved in the counter-piracy efforts – are dealing with a somewhat unusual “crime scene”. Navies also have to overcome, he added, a traditional reluctance to share what might otherwise be regarded as classified information.
Seafarers are being asked to play their part in evidence-gathering but a separate report* by a NATO internal department (the Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre) stressed the need for navies to improve their appreciation of the realities on board merchant ships, pointing out the leanness of crewing and the operational demands on seafarers leave them little time and energy to devote to the stream of piracy-related information they receive.
A further misconception lies in the belief among naval personnel that their counterparts in merchant shipping are as high-tech and wired-up as they are. “Most merchant ships do not have reliable, inexpensive Internet connections to pull information from websites and lack free time to browse for information” the report noted. “Few shipping companies have operations centres which can seek out information and push it to their ships.”
The report also revealed Masters’ confusion over who “is in charge” of counter-piracy and whom they should call for help. It concedes there are “myriad” points of contact and, with little likelihood of a single, unified command on counter-piracy to present “a simple common face to merchant mariners”, it admitted that, while there is “unity of purpose” among the different organisations and every effort to co-operate and co-ordinate, “confusion will still exist”.
Seafarers may take some comfort from the news pirate bosses are within the law’s long reach and from the navy waking up to the reality of their working lives, but as long as ships continue to be hijacked and hostages cruelly treated will think it is all taking far too long.
Source: Bimco