Somali pirates are fast becoming "the masters of the Indian Ocean" with foreign navies forced by legal constraints to release nine out of every 10 they detain, according to a UN envoy.
Jack Lang, the UN's top legal adviser on maritime piracy, has told the security council that special courts should be urgently established in northern Somalia and Tanzania to try suspected Somali hijackers and break the present cycle of impunity. Currently few countries are prepared to hold and prosecute captured pirates, while lawlessness in the main part of Somalia makes trials there impossible.
The navies' "catch and release" policy is one reason attacks on ships off the Horn of Africa reached record levels last year despite the presence of several dozen foreign warships.
At least 49 vessels were hijacked off Somalia in 2010 according to the International Maritime Bureau, with 1,016 foreign sailors taken hostage. Individual ransom payments routinely run into millions of dollars, while crew members are being detained for ever longer periods, sometimes up to a year.
Yesterday, a German shipping line asked for help after Somali pirates seized one of its cargo ships and the 12 crew on board in the Indian Ocean. The owners of the Beluga Nomination based in Bremen, Germany, said the boat was captured on Saturday north of the Seychelles, "far away from the internationally defined zone of high risk at the Horn of Africa".
After two days aboard, the pirates managed to break into the ship's control room and steer the 433ft (132m) vessel west towards the Somali coast, the firm said.
Noting that the pirates had also dramatically increased their range – up to 1,000 miles east of Somalia and as far south as the Mozambique channel – Lang admitted the situation was "worsening" and the pirates were winning.
"These are 1,500 people [pirates] who are defying the world, defying the UN. We must act now, quickly and firmly," said Lang, a former French government minister.
Countries such as Kenya have previously held Somalis captured by foreign navies and placed them on trial. But with its legal system already overloaded the government is reluctant to take any more, and all piracy cases are on hold anyway after a Kenyan judge ruled the country had no jurisdiction to try them.
In his report, Lang said the "Somaliasation" of the legal battle against piracy was key. He proposed special courts in Somaliland, the breakaway republic in northern Somalia, and in neighbouring Puntland, an autonomous region where some of the main gangs are based. Hundreds of suspects are already jailed in both areas, although the poor prison conditions and low legal standards mean foreign navies are reluctant to hand over more.
The two new courts would get foreign funding and training but be staffed by Somalis. A third court, also using Somali law, would be based in Arusha, Tanzania, which hosts the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda.
The cost would be $25m (£15m) over three years, Lang said. By contrast, the annual cost of Indian Ocean piracy was between $5bn and $7bn.
The Somali government is strongly opposed to the idea of the Tanzania court. There are also concerns about Puntland, where corruption is rife and some of the most powerful officials are believed to have close links to the pirate bosses.
Andrew Mwangura, head of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme in Mombasa, which monitors piracy, said special courts were a good idea as long as they were based outside Somalia. "If the international community sends money to Somalia for this it will just be eaten," he said.
Lang stressed it was essential to hunt down the pirate leaders and said the names of a dozen gang bosses were known. Alan Cole, co-ordinator of the counter-piracy programme of the UN office on drugs and crime in Nairobi, admitted this would be difficult for Interpol. But he said other areas needed to be looked at, too, including the role of the London-based shipping and insurance companies responsible for negotiating and paying the bulk of the ransoms.
"With many crimes you can push down on both supply and demand – the dealer and the user in drug cases, for example," he said. "With piracy we can go after the gangs at sea but the funding activities, the ransom payments, are not illegal. That makes it extremely difficult to take effective action."
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