The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [53]
My first of two visits to the prison had taken place on a very special day: a presidential visit by Abdirahman Farole. I had been accompanying the president for over a week as he travelled north from Garowe to Bossaso on his first domestic tour since his election. In each town and hamlet along the way, cheering throngs had welcomed him with joyous ululations, waving fronds and banging furiously on empty oil canisters. As his gold bulletproofed Land Cruiser pulled through the outer gate, he was greeted with even greater jubilation by the prison population, and for good cause: in celebration of his inauguration, about sixty minor offenders were to receive presidential pardons—a necessary measure to free up much-needed space in the overcrowded prison for more serious criminals.
The president did not disappoint; after delivering a speech to an assembly of prisoners, his soldiers, arms overflowing with stacks of bills, doled out release grants to the pardoned men, each of whom received one million shillings (this grant, worth about thirty dollars, was enough to buy about a day and a half’s worth of khat in the local suq).
As the president’s inspection tour moved towards the prison’s living quarters, three pirate inmates were brought out to me in the outer courtyard, where we sat down on a set of flimsy plastic lawn chairs. Two wore striped tracksuits, the other, slacks and a blue dress shirt; all three appeared to be in a state of robust health that defied the conditions in which they lived. I soon learned that one of the men, Jamal, was Boyah’s younger brother. Like his sibling, Jamal seemed to have a natural inclination towards leadership; seating himself directly across from me, he proceeded to field the majority of my questions. His two colleagues sat calmly smoking on either side of him, occasionally blurting out angry responses. Within a few minutes, a crowd of soldiers and prison officials had gathered around us, and the bodies pressing against my back forced me to hunch over my notebook.
“What we were doing wasn’t illegal,” Jamal began. “We were chasing after illegal fishing ships. We were defending our seas.” Like Boyah, the three claimed to have been lobster divers in Eyl. They had habitually sold their catch to Somali middlemen in Bossaso, they said, who had paid them up to twenty-five dollars per kilogram. One month before, the trio had been caught by the French navy in an act of piracy, and were later handed over to the Puntland authorities.
“We were all sentenced to life in prison without even being given a lawyer,” said Jamal. “We want a retrial.”
The length of their sentences seemed unbelievable, and I asked my interpreter to confirm that I had understood correctly. It seemed a gross injustice for Jamal to languish in prison while Boyah—who had publicly admitted to hijacking dozens of ships—was free to chew khat with Puntland soldiers.
Shifting tacks, I asked Jamal about the former Puntland Coast Guard’s involvement with illegal fishing, but he ignored the question and continued as if he were reading from a press release: “As fishermen, we were victims of every kind of ship crossing this planet: Western, Asian, whatever.”
I repeated the question, but the result was the same.
“They dump toxins in our waters, and no one cares,” he said. “Hopefully, the new government has some new ideas, and we can talk to them about what’s going on and the problems we have.” It was a strange attitude for men whose life sentences meant that their future problems would presumably be contained within these four walls.
Neither Jamal nor his colleagues would shed any light on the circumstances of their