Tag: maritime piracy

The Piracy Bill, introduced in Parliament recently, seeks to tackle the growing incidence of piracy Abimanyu Nagarajan examines the proposed lawPiracy on the high seas has been rampant in recent years. Many of these pirates are from Somalia. On several occasions Indian merchant ships in the Arabian Sea and elsewhere have been attacked by them, so much so that Indian merchant vessels have now been given permission to hire mercenaries to protect themselves.An International Maritime Bureau (IMB) report says there have been 148 attacks and 17 hijackings around the world this year with Somali pirates accounting for 61 of these attacks and 12 of the hijackings. Around 188 crew members have been taken hostage so far, the report adds. Although the IMB does not have India-specific figures, it does say that since Indian seamen form the bulk of the world's merchant shipping industry, they have been held hostage by pirates the most number of times.In an effort to curb this problem, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) recently came up with the Piracy Bill, 2012. The main aim of this bill is to facilitate legal procedures for prosecuting pirates. The bill was felt to be necessary because at present the ...

Dutch parliament has agreed to expand involvement in the NATO operation The Dutch parliament has agreed to expand involvement in the NATO operation Ocean Shield, targeting piracy in Somali waters. But ships wanting to hire private security forces to give them extra protection will not be allowed to do so.The Netherlands will send extra personnel, two Cougar helicopters and an unmanned plane to the region.Meeting a NATO request, the Netherlands will also send a submarine to join the mission in the second half of 2012. The additional involvement is targeting intelligence gathering and will cost 13 million euros. The Dutch government says the aim is to help detect piracy early on and prevent the escalation of violence. The pirates are well-organised, have substantial financial backing and operate from well-equipped mother ships supplied from camps along the Somali coast. Their main targets are merchant ships and (food) aid convoys, at least fifty-nine merchant ships were attacked last year, thirteen of them were hijacked.Private security forcesOn Tuesday Dutch insurance companies backed an earlier appeal by ship-owners to allow merchant ships to hire private protection forces. They claim the Dutch naval forces are underequipped to protect all ships passing through the Gulf of ...

Mauritius is the latest in a series of countries to agree to take suspected pirates for prosecution Mauritius is the latest in a series of countries to agree to take suspected pirates for prosecution.This Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) allows for the transfer of suspected pirates from Royal Navy vessels to Mauritius for prosecution. The UK has signed MOUs with the Seychelles (2010) and Tanzania (2012).The UK is leading international work with countries in and around the Indian Ocean to build penal, judicial and law enforcement capacities, and to encourage regional states to change national laws to allow prosecution of cases where they have been detained at sea with piratical equipment, but no actual piracy attack can be proved.We particularly want to see an end to pirates being captured and then released purely because there is nowhere to prosecute and imprison them. We must break the piracy business cycle. A key part of achieving this is the willingness of countries in the region to take suspected pirates for prosecution.Today the Prime Minister joined a meeting between FCO Minister Henry Bellingham and Mauritian Prime Minister, Dr Navin Ramgoolam in Downing Street to sign an agreement which will allow the Royal Navy to ...

Up to 15 years The prosecutor in the Paris trial of six Somalis charged with holding crew of a luxury sailing ship hostage in the Gulf of Aden in 2008 on Monday called for sentences of up to 15 years."These six men you are going to judge ... seriously endangered French lives," prosecutor Bruno Sturlese told the court."They were ready to sacrifice them to get money," he added.Somali pirates seized 30 crew members of the luxury yacht Le Ponant in the pirate-infested waters in April 2008 and held them for ransom.French special forces arrested the six men, aged 25 to 50, in an airborne operation after a ransom had been paid.Only one of them admits to being a pirate. Two admit to having been aboard the elegant 88-metre (290-foot) three-master but only to sell goats, cigarettes and the mild narcotic khat. The other three deny ever having set foot on the boat.Sturlese called for a 15-year sentence against Ismael Ali Samatar, 31, the only one to have admitted his role in the crime. The prosecutor said he had played a greater role in the hostage-taking operation than the others.But he said the others were also implicated, having been arrested aboard ...

Attacks drop to 16, but sheltered locations could be targeted in June Pirate attacks dropped for the second consecutive month in May off the coasts of Africa.Activity in May dropped to 25 attacks, with 16 in the waters surrounding Africa. One vessel was hijacked, a Liberia-flagged tanker, and no vessels were released last month. Attacks increased in the northern Gulf of Oman, where swarm tactics were reported for the first time.GAC attributes much of the decrease to the onset of the monsoon season."Weather conditions in the Somali basin, Indian Ocean and southern Arabian Sea gradually worsened over the course of May, explaining the drop in attacks in those areas," GAC said. "More attacks are therefore likely in sheltered chokepoints such as the northern Gulf of Oman and Bab al-Mandab straits in the coming weeks."May saw the first land-based operation by the European Union's anti-piracy force. A helicopter destroyed a Somalian pirate base.In other anti-piracy efforts, Ghana has begun training staff for its new vessel traffic management and information system to provide electronic monitoring of its coast in an effort to counter piracy and armed robbery at sea. The system is being installed by Eltel Networks of Finland.The VTMIS consists of ...

Anti-piracy efforts were now focused on "following the money All necessary measures must be taken to punish and prosecute pirates, and governments should adopt a multinational approach to fight the problem, according to the US ambassador to Greece, Daniel Smith.Speaking at the US Department of Commerce's maritime anti-piracy seminar held at Posidonia, Mr Smith criticised the reluctance of certain governments not to pursue cases and said the US was co-operating to implement new prosecution measures."Piracy used to be an ad hoc endeavour but it has now become a highly developed criminal enterprise," he said. "Unless prosecution is enhanced pirates will continue to reap the rewards."Mr Smith said that ransom demands were steadily increasing and said anti-piracy efforts were now focused on "following the money".Mr Smith told shipowners that they simply could not afford not to employ the latest best management practices and added that a vast majority of vessels that had been successfully hijacked in the past had failed to comply with BMP4Source: Intermanager

Asia-Pacific regional conference The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) and its affiliated trade unions will hold the Asia-Pacific regional conference here next week to discuss sea crime in the region.Chairman of the ITF's Asia-Pacific Region Hanafi Rustandi said the conference that would last four days on Monday through Thursday was so important for Indonesia that relevant authorities, including the Indonesian Military and the police were also invited to attract the government's attention to sea crimes which have caused losses to the government and affect the livelihood of seafarers."Armed robberies have been on the rise in Indonesia's ports while piracy has been increasing on the Malacca straits, the South China Sea and Somalian waters in the past few years. Several Indonesian cargo and fishing vessels, including their crew members, have been hijacked and released after paying ransoms," he said.Indonesia would also raise issues on illegal fishing and infringement of the cabotage principle, which has exploited Indonesian seafarers, he said."The inter-island trade, or cabotage, is an extremely sensitive issue for most Asia-Pacific countries, there have been far too many incidents involving seafarers and ships because of relaxed legislation. The time has come to look at the issue to invigorate the role of ...

An incident in the Gulf of Oman has once again focused attention on the difficulties under which ships with armed guards embarked can find themselves in these pirate-infested waters. Pirates, for obvious reasons, are moving further and further from their bases on the coast of Somalia and are tending to blend in to the fishing activities that are encountered in these seas. Very large numbers of these small craft fish these waters. Indeed, an estimate from the Omani authorities suggested that up to 40,000 small craft might be found at sea in the north-western sector of the Indian Ocean.Many of these craft are indistinguishable from the skiffs and other local craft employed by the pirates, with only a close inspection identifying boarding ladders and firearms providing a reasonable assumption that the fast craft approaching is a pirate skiff and not an innocent fisherman speeding back to shore with his catch. And it would not be the first encounter that saw a furious fisherman whose lines or nets had been damaged by a passing ship speeding alongside to remonstrate with those aboard the ship that had caused him such damage. With those aboard a ship in a high state of alert ...

Djibouti Code of Conduct The Council of Ministers (Cabinet) on Thursday approved Mozambique's adoption of the Code of Conduct concerning the Repression of Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in the Western Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, also known as the "Djibouti Code of Conduct".The Djibouti Code facilitates the sharing of information among countries in the region and actions to repress maritime piracy.Speaking to reporters shortly after the Cabinet meeting, government spokesperson Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources Abdul Razak explained that Mozambique's accession to the Code "will allow Mozambique to share information among member countries in the region and will give access to technical training and support for the purchase of equipment for the fight against piracy".The Djibouti Code, which became effective on 29 January 2009, promotes the implementation of a number of United Nations Security Council and UN General Assembly resolutions which fall within the competence of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).So far 19 out of 21 eligible countries have signed the Djibouti Code of Conduct. Mozambique and France are yet to sign the Code. With Mozambique adopting the Code, France is the only eligible country yet to join.During the meeting, the Cabinet also ratified two agreements: ...

US Ambassador to Greece Daniel Bennett Smith noted that piracy at sea was a crime of global concern The persistent and growing scourge of piracy on the high seas - a problem that is costing billions of US dollars every year - was the focus of the first-ever seminar on available anti-piracy services and technology, hosted by the US embassy in Greece on Tuesday at the Posidonia international shipping exhibition, which is again taking place in Athens on June 4-8.In opening remarks, US Ambassador to Greece Daniel Bennett Smith noted that piracy at sea was a crime of global concern and that counter-piracy patrols - though supported by the United States - were not in themselves sufficient to guarantee ship safety.He pointed out that pirates - from their originally ad hoc, disorganised beginnings - are now using increasingly advanced methods and venturing further and further offshore in what is now becoming a highly developed, transnational criminal enterprise.While referring to cooperative efforts with other nations to investigate and prosecute these crimes and, especially, as he said "follow the money trail" that led to those financing the pirates, he noted they were too often simply let go when caught due to states' ...