Prosecuting Pirates: Lessons Learned and Continuing Challenges
SINCE 2005, there has been growing consensus and frequently recurring calls in the international community for the leaders, financiers, and land-based facilitators of modern maritime piracy to be prosecuted.
There is broad recognition (at least in concept and rhetoric) that successfully prosecuting the low-level skiff pirates, while part of the equation, will ultimately have limited impact on ending or substantially reducing piracy, at least in terms of the law enforcement and prosecution components of national and international counter-piracy efforts.
Indeed, one of the four priorities of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia for 2013 and beyond is “[t]o strengthen and focus law enforcement efforts to disrupt pirate networks ashore, including by establishing effective information exchanges among prosecutors, investigators and private industry” Yet to date, with the exception of the conviction of two pirate negotiators (which might be considered mid-level management) and the recent arrest of pirate leader Mohamed Abdi Hassan (better known as “Afweyne”) in Belgium, there have been no prosecutions of higher- or top-level pirate leaders, financiers, or facilitators.
While approximately 1,200 pirates have been, or are being, prosecuted in various parts of the world (primarily in Somalia, 402; Kenya, 164; Yemen, 129; and Seychelles, 124), almost none of them can be considered anything more than low-level skiff pirates. Why is that the case, and what lessons can the international community and national authorities learn from our experience fighting East African piracy, in fighting piracy elsewhere, or indeed dealing with other international and transnational crime?
Maritime piracy today, on anything other than its smallest scale, is a form of organized crime, involving land-based financiers and organizers, mother ship operators, suppliers, pirate crews, hostage negotiators and money launderers:
As a transnational organized crime, Somali piracy entails more than armed youngsters at sea in small boats attacking ships or providing armed protection aboard hijacked vessels. The piracy business draws on a widespread network of facilitators internationally and inside Somalia from multiple layers of society. In fact, pirates and their accomplices may be bankers, telecommunications agents, businessmen of various kinds, politicians, clan elders, translators or aid workers, all using their regular occupations or positions to facilitate one or another network.
Piracy today [is] an economy . . . which [has] taken on an industrial scope, thanks to the rapid sophistication of its methods, organizational structures and resources. Pirate behaviour -- the demand of high ransoms, use of advanced technologies and extreme talent in money-laundering -- [is] similar to that of the mafia. There’s a machinery behind this and it functions quite well.
By 2009, Somali pirates were responsible for more than half of the 406 worldwide incidents of piracy and armed robbery at sea. By 2010, more than 1,000 seafarers were being held hostage and the New York Times declared: “The Pirates are Winning!”
Download the Full Report by Kenneth Scott (with Jon Huggins & Jon Bellish, OBP Project Team)
Subscribe to our newsletter. Receive a weekly round-up of all piracy-related & maritime situational awareness news.
OCEANUSLive.org
Information, Security, Safety; Shared
Submitted by Team@oceanuslive.org