Wimping out with pirates

I wonder what the Canadian policy is for any pirates we might capture (answer at Upperdate--and see Uppestdate):

NATO frees hostages from pirates, new ship seized

Dutch commandos freed 20 Yemeni hostages on Saturday and briefly detained seven pirates who had forced the Yemenis to sail a "mother ship" attacking vessels in the Gulf of Aden, NATO officials said.

In a separate incident, gunmen from Somalia seized a Belgian-registered ship and its 10 crew, including seven Europeans, further south in the Indian Ocean. A pirate source said the vessel, the Pompei, would be taken to the coast...

NATO Lieutenant Commander Alexandre Fernandes, speaking on board the Portuguese warship Corte-Real, said the 20 fishermen were rescued after a Dutch navy frigate on a NATO patrol [more here] responded to an assault on a Greek-owned tanker by pirates firing assault rifles and grenades.

Commandos from the Dutch ship, the De Zeven Provincien, pursued the pirates, who were on a small skiff, back to their "mother ship" -- a hijacked Yemeni fishing dhow.

"We have freed the hostages, we have freed the dhow and we have seized the weapons... The pirates did not fight and no gunfire was exchanged," Fernandes told Reuters. The Corte-Real is also on a NATO anti-piracy mission.

He said the hostages had been held since last week. The commandos briefly detained and questioned the seven gunmen, he told Reuters, but had no legal power to arrest them.

"NATO does not have a detainment policy. The warship must follow its national law," he said.

"They can only arrest them if the pirates are from the Netherlands, the victims are from the Netherlands, or if they are in Netherlands waters. [emphasis added]"..

The Dutch ship involved:

De Zeven Provincieën (ANP)

More on the class of frigates here.

The Americans, for their part, seem to have decided on how to handle one captured pirate (but remember it was a US ship attacked):

The captured Somali pirate who held a merchant ship captain hostage will be brought to New York to face trial, a U.S. official said Thursday.

The suspect, identified as Abduhl Wal-i-Musi, was taken aboard a U.S. Navy ship shortly before Navy SEAL snipers killed the three remaining pirates holding Capt. Richard Phillips hostage on a lifeboat launched from his cargo vessel, the Maersk Alabama.

The official said it was not immediately clear when Wal-i-Musi will be brought to New York. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose information about an ongoing investigation.

CBS News first reported the name of the suspect and the decision to prosecute him in New York.

Officials decided to send him to trial in New York in part because the FBI office there has a history of handling cases in Africa involving major crimes against Americans, such as the al-Qaida bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.

Officials at the New York FBI office did not immediately comment.

The government had been weighing whether to bring the suspect to trial in the United States or hand him over to authorities in Kenya, which has an international agreement to prosecute pirates...

More on the question:

Navies ask: What do you do with a captured pirate?
...
In fact, most pirates plucked from the seas by warships of differenct countries are simply set free because of the many pitfalls along the path to prosecution.

"Prosecuting detained pirates - that is simply not our business," said Cmdr. Achim Winkler of a European Union flotilla that has nine warships and three maritime patrol planes guarding shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden.

As the world grapples with the scourge of piracy in the busy waters off the Horn of Africa, the United States and other countries are calling for the bandits to be held accountable. Some even are considering a special tribunal.

A Kenya-based diplomat of another country that patrols those waters says putting pirates on trial is "still a lot of hassle." Pirate boats are often destroyed to prevent the pirates from getting back to sea, but unless they're caught in the act his navy's policy is to set the marauders free.

"While nobody would advocate the ancient naval tradition of just making them walk the gangplank, equipment like GPSes, weapons (and) ladders are often just tossed overboard and the pirates let go," said the diplomat, who asked that his name not be used because he is not authorized to speak to reporters.

What happens to captured pirates often depends on the nationalities of their victims and the navy that detained them. French soldiers take pirates who have attacked French citizens to Paris; pirates who have attacked other nations are hauled to Kenya, such as the 11 seized when the French navy found them stalking a Lebanese-owned ship this week. India took 24 suspects to Yemen, since half were from there.

The Dutch took five suspects to Rotterdam, where they probably will be tried next month under a 17th century law against "sea robbery" in the attack of the Dutch Antilles-flagged ship Samanyulo in January...

More at a (large) topic thread at Milnet.ca.

Update: An excerpt from a very useful article on piracy as whole, by Robert Sibley of the Ottawa Citizen:

Showdown on the high seas
It's modern navies vs. ragtag gangs. So why does it seem like the pirates are winning?
...
Today, the international reference for dealing with piracy is the United Nations' Law of the Sea Convention. And legal experts frown on hanging. Pirates are no longer to be viewed as "enemies of the human race." Pirates have rights. "Allowing states to exercise universal jurisdiction over pirates violates the due process of the pirates and poses a threat to international stability," lawyer Joshua Michael Goodwin wrote in a 2006 paper, Universal Jurisdiction and the Pirate. The exercise of universal jurisdiction over pirates today is "fundamentally unfair."

So unfair that Article 110 of the convention prohibits naval ships from turning their guns on suspected pirates [emphasis added--scroll down here for the Article]. Instead, as Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Brett recently pointed out [November 2008, actually], they must first board the suspect ship and inquire whether the pirates are, in fact, pirates.

In any case, with no international body able to try and imprison pirates, few countries want to be responsible for their care and feeding. The British Foreign Office warned Royal Navy ships not to take pirates captive in case they ask for asylum in Britain, or face repatriation to countries where their treatment might violate British human rights laws.

In 2006, the U.S. navy took 11 pirates prisoner. "Not wanting to set a precedent for trying pirates in U.S. courts, the State Department turned to Kenya to do the job," says Brett. This apparent reluctance to confront piracy forcefully undermines efforts to get rid of it, says Iklé, an undersecretary of defence during the Reagan years...

Upperdate: We let them go too (via Alex in "Comments"):

NATO warships - including a Canadian warship - and helicopters pursued Somali pirates for seven hours after they attacked a Norwegian tanker in the Gulf of Aden.

The high-speed chase only ended when warning shots were fired at the pirates' skiff, NATO spokesmen said Sunday.

Seven pirates attempted to attack the Norwegian-flagged MV Front Ardenne late Saturday but fled after crew took evasive manoeuvres and alerted warships in the area, said Portuguese Lt. Cmdr. Alexandre Santos Fernandes, aboard a warship in the Gulf of Aden, and Cmdr. Chris Davies, of NATO's maritime headquarters in England.

"How the attack was thwarted is unclear, it appears to have been the actions of the tanker," Davies said. Fernandes said no shots were fired at the tanker.

Davies said the pirates sailed into the path of the Canadian warship HMCS Winnipeg, which was escorting a World Food Program delivery ship through the Gulf of Aden. The American ship USS Halyburton was also in the area and joined the chase.

"There was a lengthy pursuit, over seven hours," Davies said.

The pirates hurled weapons into the dark seas as the Canadian and U.S. warships closed in. The ships are part of NATO's anti-piracy mission.

"The skiff abandoned the scene and tried to escape to Somali territory," Fernandes said. "It was heading toward Bossaso we managed to track them ... warning shots have been made after several attempts to stop the vessel."

Both ships deployed helicopters, and naval officers hailed the pirates over loudspeakers and finally fired warning shots to stop them, Fernandes said, but not before the pirates had dumped most of their weapons overboard. NATO forces boarded the skiff, where they found a rocket-propelled grenade, and interrogated, disarmed and released the pirates.

The pirates cannot be prosecuted under Canadian law because they did not attack Canadian citizens or interests and the crime was not committed on Canadian territory.

"When a ship is part of NATO, the detention of person is a matter for the national authorities," Fernandes said. "It stops being a NATO issue and starts being a national issue [emphasis added]."

The pirates' release underscores the difficulties navies have in fighting rampant piracy off the coast of lawless Somalia. Most of the time foreign navies simply disarm and release the pirates they catch due to legal complications and logistical difficulties in transporting pirates and witnesses to court.

Pirates have attacked more than 80 boats this year alone, four times the number assaulted in 2003, according to the Kuala Lumpur-based International Maritime Bureau. They now hold at least 18 ships - including a Belgian tanker seized Saturday with 10 crew aboard - and over 310 crew hostage, according to an Associated Press count [more details at this CNN story].

HMCS Winnipeg is shown approaching a ship in the Gulf of Oman in this photo. ©DND/For Editorial and Educational Use Only

Uppestdate: Mr Sibley is more forthright at his blog:

Navy SEALS show how civilized societies deal with "latrunculi"

I’m fond of historical coincidence, so I enjoyed a small frisson in learning that U.S. Navy SEAL snipers who capped a trio of Somali pirates did so from stern of the destroyer USS Bainbridge.

According to navy officials, the SEALS fired three shots when the pirates made the mistake of showing themselves above the gunwales of the small lifeboat where they were holding Richard Philips, the American captain of the MV Maersk Alabama, hostage. They were only 30 yards away, but it was dark and the sharpshooters were hiding on the stern of a ship in rolling waters.

It was remarkable shooting, as anyone who’s ever tried to hit a distance target with a rifle shot will acknowledge.

But I especially liked the coincidental justice of the incident. The USS Bainbridge, you see, was named in honour of Commodore William Bainbridge, who, among other exploits, served two nearly two centuries ago in the then fledgling American navy when the United States fought another batch of pirates in the Second Barbary War in 1815-1816.

Of course, there were those who saw the hostage-standoff as evidence the “limits” to what the world’s most powerful military can do, and now fret about other pirates escalating the level of violence in future ship hijackings. But I side with the editors of the Wall Street Journal, who opined that the incident showed “the apparently still-needed distinction between the behaviour of the civilized world and of barbarism.”

The pirates would still be alive if they hadn’t acted like barbarians in the first place. (And don’t give me that rot about root causes; you know, how the pirates are the sad products of a failed state.) The actions of the SEALS should remind everyone that recourse to violence is sometimes the only way a civilized order can respond to those who assume violence is their prerogative...