The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [127]
8. Quoted in Christopher Thompson, “Suspected Somali Pirates in the Dock,” Financial Times, January 8, 2010, http://www.ft.com.
9. Quoted in Gathii, “Jurisdiction to Prosecute Non-National Pirates,” 19.
10. The legal argument used to reject the appeal rested on two principles: first, that piracy on the high seas was a crime under the Kenyan penal code; second, that piracy was a crime under international customary law, or jus gentium, and thus the Kenyan High Court was justified in extending its jurisdiction beyond the nation’s borders. Ibid., 4, 8–9.
11. “Jail Sentence for Somali pirates,” BBC News, November 1, 2006, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news.
12. Quoted in Gathii, “Jurisdiction to Prosecute Non-National Pirates,” 11–12. Article 101 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea defines piracy as follows:
(a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed:
(i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;
(ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State;
(b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft;
(c) any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in subparagraph (a) or (b).
13. Gathii, “Jurisdiction to Prosecute Non-National Pirates,” 19.
14. Quoted ibid., 26.
15. Ibid., 24.
16. In response to a Russian-led Security Council initiative in April 2010, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon proposed seven options for prosecuting suspected Somali pirates, including the creation of an international tribunal. To date, the Security Council has rejected this option due to its prohibitive cost, as well as the difficulty of finding a nation to host the proceedings. In January 2011, the UN’s special advisor on piracy, Jack Lang, issued a report urging the creation of regional piracy tribunals in Puntland, Somaliland, and Tanzania. The proposal, estimated to cost $25 million over three years, also called for the construction of additional prisons in Somalia.
CHAPTER 11: INTO THE PIRATES’ LAIR
1. Jonathan Clayton, “Somalia’s Secret Dumps of Toxic Waste Washed Ashore by Tsunami,” Times (London), March 4, 2005, http://www.thetimes.co.uk. The claims of the local people and the initial UN Environmental Programme assessment mission were challenged by a subsequent UN fact-finding mission to Puntland’s coastal areas, which failed to find evidence of widespread radiation sickness. “UN Mission to Puntland on Toxic Waste in the Coastal Areas of Somalia,” Somaliland Times, October 7, 2005, http://www.somalilandtimes.net.
CHAPTER 12: PIRATE INSIDER
1. Though tempting to believe (and completely consistent with other accounts of pirate behaviour), Hersi’s claims contradict the statements of both former Victoria hostages I interviewed, Matei Levenescu and Traian Mihai, who asserted that the pirates on the ship never consumed alcohol and never progressed beyond fist fights. The incidents Hersi discussed may have taken place on land.
2. In the case of the Victoria, intra-group tensions may have been due to the lack of familial homogeneity within the gang. According to former hostage Traian Mihai, the gang was composed of multiple families from various towns in Puntland; however, they were almost certainly all members of the Isse Mahamoud sub-clan.
3. This is almost certainly an exaggeration, though if one considers the money the gang spent on khat (see Chapter 14), potentially not a very gross one.
CHAPTER 13: THE CADET AND THE CHIEF
1. German defence ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe reported that a Turkish frigate had been within eighty to one hundred nautical miles at the time of the attack. Katharine Houreld,