The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [126]
8. See David Osler, “Sonic Solution May Not Be a Sound Investment,” Lloyd’s List, December 2, 2008.
9. “Chinese Ship Uses Molotov Cocktails to Fight Off Somali Pirates,” Telegraph (London), December 19, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk.
10. After first announcing its intention to prosecute the ten captured pirates in Moscow, the Russian government reversed its position and decided to release the men in an inflatable boat without any navigational equipment. Afterwards, the Russian defence ministry reported that the pirates had “probably died” at sea. The summary execution scenario is far more likely, and supported by a comment by President Dmitry Medvedev on the day the Moscow University was stormed: “We’ll have to do what our forefathers did when they met the pirates.” Mansur Mirovalev, “Pirates ‘Have All Died,’ Russia Says, after Decrying ‘Imperfections’ in International Law,” Associated Press, May 11, 2010.
11. Based on International Maritime Bureau statistics, IMB Piracy Reporting Centre, http://www.icc-ccs.org/home/piracy-reporting-centre.
12. This estimate is based on the cost to the shipping companies; once financial, legal, and private security fees are tacked on, the total cost of delivering a ransom roughly doubles.
CHAPTER 10: THE LAW OF THE SEA
1. Marie Woolf, “Pirates Can Claim UK Asylum,” Times (London), April 13, 2008, http://www.thetimes.co.uk.
2. Preceding the UNCLOS treaty of 1982, Somalia was one of a handful of states to claim a territorial sea of two hundred nautical miles, through its Law No. 37 of 1972. One of the primary motivators behind UNCLOS was the need to standardize the width of territorial seas, which the convention achieved by limiting its signatories to a territorial sea of twelve nautical miles. Though Somalia was amongst the first countries to ratify UNCLOS, Law No. 37 was never subsequently repealed, leaving an ambiguity surrounding the status of Somalia’s territorial seas. “From the behaviour of states patrolling the waters off the coast of Somalia it would seem clear that they assume that the external limit of the Somali territorial sea is 12 miles,” writes Tullio Treves, a judge at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg. “Whether this is also the assumption of the TFG [Somali Transitional Federal Government] is uncertain.” Treves, “Piracy, Law of the Sea, and Use of Force: Developments of the Coast of Somalia,” European Journal of International Law 20, no. 4 (Apr. 2009): 408.
3. The Security Council extended this patchwork legal arrangement for another twelve months in December 2008 (Resolution 1846), and again in November 2009 (Resolution 1897).
4. Resolution 1816 and its successors were issued under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which authorizes the use of military force to counter threats to “international peace and security.” Given that Chapter VII permits the violation of national sovereignty, Resolution 1816’s emphasis on obtaining the authorization of the Somali government seems redundant. According to Tullio Treves, the requirement served three objectives: “The first is to pay homage to state sovereignty … The second is to strengthen the TFG, which, while maintaining the Somali presence at the United Nations, does not exercise effective power in Somalia, and in particular lacks the capacity to fight pirate activities off its coasts. The third, through the designation by the TFG of the states whose vessels are authorized to act in its territorial sea, would seem to consist in limiting the foreign fleets’ presence in Somali waters to those of the states most involved, and to states ready to cooperate with each other.” Treves, “Piracy, Law of the Sea, and Use of Force,” 407.
5. After the far-reaching expansion of piracy into the Indian Ocean, the Seychelles also entered into an agreement with the EU to detain suspected pirates, though its capacity to try them is extremely limited.
6. David Morgan, “U.S. Delivers Seven Somali Pirate Suspects to Kenya,” Reuters, March 5, 2009.
7. James Gathii, “Jurisdiction to Prosecute Non-National Pirates Captured