Somali Pirates

Over a month ago, a band of Somali pirates seized a United Nations World Food Program vessel and held 10 people hostage. Andrew Cawthorne, Somali Pirates to Free Crew of Hijacked Tanker, Wash. Post, Aug. 7, 2005, at A17, also available here. The vessel, laden with tons of rice donated by Japan and Germany, had been heading for the port of Bossaso, also known as Bender Cassim, when it was seized on June 27. Id. But, as reported by the Washington Post, the pirates have agreed to release the vessel and crew. Id.

Initially, the pirates demanded a $500,000 for the hostages, but then reduced the demand to only the rice. Id. It seems that now an agreement has been reached to release the ship and unload the rice in the port of El Maan, just north of Mogadishu. Id.

Piracy is a universally condemned crime, one of the few to which “universal jurisdiction” applies. See Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States § 404 (1987) [hereinafter, Restatement]. Under the concept of universal jurisdiction, any nation can prosecute a person for certain acts committed anywhere in the world, if that nation’s domestic statutes allow it.

In the United States, piracy is criminalized by 18 U.S.C. § 1651 which states that whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, will be imprisoned for life. Piracy is defined as “a forcible depredation upon property on the high seas without lawful authority, done … in a spirit and intention of universal hostility.” United States v. Baker, 24 F. Cas. 962, 965 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1861) (No. 14,501). Likewise, a pirate is a person who “roves the sea in an armed vessel … on his own authority, and for the purpose of seizing by force and appropriating to himself, without discrimination, every vessel he may meet.” Id. The term “high seas” typically refers to international waters.

Acts of piracy are quite common. According to the Washington Post, the Somali incident was just one of at least 25 pirate attacks since the beginning of the year. Furthermore, piracy is beginning to resemble modern international terrorism. “Today’s pirates are often trained fighters aboard speedboats equipped with satellite phones and global positioning systems and armed with automatic weapons, antitank missiles, and grenades.” Gal Luft et al., Terrorism Goes to Sea, Foreign Aff., Nov.-Dec. 2004, at 61. In fact, on July 26, a band of 35 pirates carrying machine guns and rocket launchers boarded a tanker laden with methane in the Malacca Strait, whose waters are shared by Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Kari Huus, Resurgence of Piracy Highlights Terror Risk, MSNBC.com, Jul. 26, 2005, available here. As terrorism concerns begin to mount, we expect to see pirate prosecutions, which are almost nonexistent, begin to increase.