Excellent! More material for my thesis! :p

These pirates are real tonnage kings:arrgh!:
So far, this month seven freighters been hijacked.
Some years ago, I took a ride in a cigarette smuggling boat, similar to the boats used by the Somali pirates. This boat was capable of doing 36 knots in a slight choppy sea.

Not long time ago, a Danish warship patrolling the area caught a group of pirates and their equipment, which strongly indicated their piracy activities.

Then the problem arose. Before sending out the ship, there was no real policy, and there still ain't AFAIK, what to do with captured pirates.

Most ordinary people, including me, would probably say: punish them as pirates were used to be punished: either sent off ship in the sea without anything far from land or hung up in a mast. Not too much discussion, just do it.

But civilized as WE were, the ship crew were not allowed to do that, so the pirates were relased. I repeat: they were released. :o :o :o
Nobody in our country would want them to come to our country for a trial, because then they might got asylum in then end, which would be some sort of reward in the end. And the UN giving Denmark mandate to patrol the area have not given mandate to execute the pirates. Why not?

I would not be surprised if these were the same who captured this big tanker. They must be laughing their a$$'es off of our "civilized" manners.

Funny, isnt it - by our being 'civilised' we're costing ourselves money, and rewarding those who don't play by the same rules.

heres a question for the more legal-minded types.

have the laws authorising the execution of those engaged in piracy ever been revoked? If not, then a more generic question is why the hell aren't we using them?!

Because we're civilized.

I don't want and don't need executions. Just opening fire on attacking speedboats not with the intention to scare them away but to sink them (so that neither the boats nor the crews could escape and strike another day), and if that does not score the intended effect: hitting their houses and villages of origin with iron fists until their own people hold them back - that would be good enough for me.

Surprised to see you say that. You take the chance of hurting innocent people. Sounds more like revenge than justice.

Justice would be secretly arming some of the high value targets and when the pirates approach, blow them the f' out of the water, kill them all. I have no problem at all with killing pirates attempting to attack an unarmed vessel in international waters.

no revenge, I am just aware of the complicated nature of any effort trying to differ between civilians and pirates, because most pirates are civilian villagers and pirates (and/or militias) at the same time. As I said above, Somalia has no central government worth to be called that, and in that understanding is not so much a nation, but simply an unregulated, anarchistic jungle. Being pirate is a part time job for many villagers and fishermen. It is being switched on and off.

AFAIK the UK abolish the death penalty for piracy only a few years ago.
By then it was taken as a joke.

However, the question is interesting legally.
I suppose Danes, Americans and Germans have the same problem.
Our navies are not police forces.
The USCG is the "ocean police" for the US, the USN may have the mandate for killing terrorists, but pirates are criminals.
Germany has the same problem, only our institutions are so convoluted that we don't even have a coast guard ;)
So the US might solve the problem Bush style by declaring them as terrorists.
The british, french and russians are simply less hindered by legalese.
Also, the british navy was traditionally founded for this exact purpose.
Actually the german navy was too, in a way. The first purpose build warship(s), the convoy ship(s) "Wappen von Hamburg" (a series of ships with the same name) were build by the free and hanseatic city of Hamburg to protect their merchants from barbary pirates.
After the last Wappen von Hamburg blew up in the early 18th century, Hamburg decided it was cheaper to rely on the royal navy for that. Also, these ships had mutated from a useful small escort into a quasi-battleship only outdone by the Sovreign of the Seas.
A second problem, which I think happened with the danes was simple:
The Pirates commited their offenses (piracy) in international waters. They were either aboard a merchant vessel or aboard their own. If they were on their own vessel, in theory (very theoretic) Somali law would apply, if they are on a merchant, the law of the flag state would apply.
So they were put on danish "territory" (one of her danish majesty's ships) but had not commited a crime on danish soil.
Extraditing them to Somali authorities would be the normal course of action, but there are none worth mentioning.

Please note that I do not endorse this legal mumbo-jumbo. I can't do anything about it either.
A UN mandate would actually be a way out, as within such a mandate, it doesn't matter what the individual nations let their navies do or on whose soil the pirates were.
A UN mandate would be the sole legal basis for any desired action, and the member states would just make their ships available to execute UN law.

Another alternative would be simply to blow the **** out of any dhow that shows up.
Problem is, there are a lot of dhows there and no real way of telling fishermen apart from pirates.
Especially since both are usually armed (fishermen have to defend themselves) and sometimes identical or at least using the same boats.

I was just begging for that hey!:|\\

I was just begging for that hey!:|\\

Well as you can't kill them, just pop them in the sea in life jackets with the daily rubbish and wait for the sharks to come and collect!:arrgh!: They are killed by mother nature, not the navy, so all laws are upheld!

strange land they're considered as a country but it's the only place on earth that can't manage to get a government i mean is there only a president there ..?
the size of their small barcasses may be difficult to detect on radar too :hmm:

summary:
Experts estimate the annual ransom earned by those pirates to be around 300 million dollar, which is 150% of Puntlands income. Whole villages live by supporting assault commandos. Along the coasts, whole small towns with many villas have been build where the warlords and clan-chiefs are residing and live a life in wealth and luxury. Piracy has turned into a profitable industry, and whole restaurants and their kitchens pop up to supply both assault commandos and hostages with food. Village communities are in almost complete support of pirate operations, and have made it the basis of their economic living.

I think this gives an idea of what we are talking about. This is not just some poor, poor fisherman not catching eniough fish anymore and being driven by hunger whn they chase those big ships instead - this is a profitable enterprise on large scale, run by warlords and militias chasing the big money. No reason to have romantic images of the noble but poor natives in your mind. Considering it, I would expand my intial tactic, send in a carrier, and let the bombers clean the whole coast of all those noble restaurants and villas and new townships and burn them down and flatten all the pirate nests completely. In other words: waging unlimited war on land. these pirate enterprises are as desperate and innocent as is the FARC innocent of having turned from an ideologically driven guerilla into an a usual common mafia group commiting acts of ordinary organised crime: smuggling drugs and weapons, and kidnapping for ransom, not following any ideals beyond that anymore.

the original article in full also mentions that it is deeply worrying that this tanker was hijacked: outside the dangerous waters, far away from the coats nad in open blue water, pirates having used a hijecked big trawler to get out to the open sea that far and just near the tanker boarded their small attack boats. This is a complete new quality, and a very dangerous escalation.

the article also says the EU is hammering out a deal with the german navy that would allow them to be a bit more active and eventually arrest pirates - to hand them over to the somalias (very good joke), or hand them over to german authorities if they had directly threatened german "Rechtsgüter". No word on preventing attacks by tying to strike the attacking boats. It is so much safer to send a rubber boat with commandoes to recapture the ship, or have a helo hovering over a ship that is hijecked by persons armed with missile launchers.

idiots, idiots, idiots.

Personally, I don't understand why the International community isn't taking more strident (military if needed) measures. The more we "pussyfoot" around, the bolder these guys become...:shifty: