French navy officers handed over 22 suspected Somali pirates to semi-autonomous Puntland’s authorities and they will be arraigned in local courts, officials said on Saturday.
Foreign navies have been deployed off the Gulf of Aden since the start of last year, operating convoys, establishing safer corridors through the most dangerous waters and arresting pirates and seizing their vessels.
“The French navy handed over these pirates, two skiff boats and video evidence showing the kind of weapons they were carrying,” Mohamed Sicid Jaqanaf, Puntland’s deputy police commissioner, told a news conference at the Bossaso port while receiving the suspects.
“This video shows their intention was not fishing ... or other civilian work. They [the French] threw the confiscated weapons and ammunition into the ocean. The pirates will be taken to court soon,” he said.
Jaqanaf did not specify what weapons the pirates had.
The French frigate spotted and seized the suspected pirates 140km off the Mogadishu coast last week.
“There are two underage boys, whom the French said they were not sure what activities they were engaged in. They were arrested on a separate boat, and we will investigate further,” Jaqanaf said.
International navies trying to stamp out piracy off Somalia are often reluctant to take suspects to their own countries because they either lack the jurisdiction to put them on trial, or they fear the pirates may seek asylum.
Emboldened by higher ransom payments, Somali sea gangs have increased attacks in recent months, making tens of millions of dollars by capturing vessels plying the Indian Ocean and the busy Gulf of Aden shipping lanes connecting Europe and Asia.
The pirates said they were innocent and were arrested while casting their nets into the ocean.
“We are fishermen, and have no idea why we have been arrested,” said one suspect, Abdulahi Ahmed.
Ahmed said the French were holding 11 of their colleagues aboard their frigate. Some of the 22 suspects were seen being frogmarched onto land.
The Puntland government says that to date it has convicted 154 people for involvement in piracy and they were serving long prison terms.
Those taken into custody on Saturday brings the number awaiting trial to 72.
Pirates have widened the range within which they operate from the Somali coastline, and have been known to seize vessels as far away as the Seychelles.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate