Freed Somali pirates 'probably died'
I am not usually one to protest the harsh treatment of pirates at the hands of the international naval forces; they are, after all, criminals. But leaving ten men adrift in an inflatable boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean, without navigational equipment, is murder, plain and simple.
Especially disingenuous is the Russian Defence Ministry's claim that, after capturing the ten pirates following a firefight on the deck of an oil tanker, that "there were not sufficient grounds to detain them." Both the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, as well as the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation, make it perfectly clear that piracy is a crime of universal jurisdiction, with any arresting nation having the right to prosecute the offenders.
Murder, however, was a much cheaper option.
Unfortunately, we are talking the Russian Navy here. Their military forces have operated for years with a slash-and-burn philosophy that was forged in war against the Nazis and got them lots of enemies in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Seeing it applied here as well is unfortunate, but not unexpected.
ReplyDeleteUpon consideration, I agree with the various commentators who suggested that the Russians probably summarily executed the captured pirates. This interpretation is supported by a comment from Dimitri Medvedev on the day the Moscow University was stormed: “We'll have to do what our forefathers did when they met the pirates.”
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