Posted on 02/03/2013 8:11:00 AM PST by DeaconBenjamin
Two men who attempted to hijack a Japanese tanker off the coast of Oman were jailed for 10 years by Tokyo District Court on Friday, a report said, in the first piracy prosecution in Japan.
The two were among four African men arrested in March 2011 over the attack in the Indian Ocean.
Men armed with submachine guns tried to seize the tanker, which was operated by Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and had 24 crew members aboard, reports said.
“It was an organized and dangerous crime by men armed with guns who sought to demand a ransom,” presiding judge Katsunori Ohno said in his ruling, according to broadcaster NHK.
U.S. Navy personnel captured the men and handed them over to Japan’s coast guard, which for the first time applied the nation’s new anti-piracy law to transport them to Tokyo to face trial.
The court used two sets of interpreters—one from Japanese to English and another from English to Somali.
The men were identified in court as Mohamed Urgus Adeysey and Abdinur Hussein Ali, and believed to be in their 20s or 30s, but reportedly said they were not certain of their own dates of birth.
Their lawyers have said they had difficulties communicating with their clients, who were apparently illiterate.
Although the two men pleaded guilty to their charges, one of their lawyers has previously told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that it was not clear whether the defendants understood the judicial system.
Defense lawyers had argued the prosecution should have been dropped because neither the place of the attack nor the tanker—which was registered in the Bahamas—were Japanese territory, previous reports said.
Two other men who were brought to Japan will go through a different trial process because they are believed to be juveniles under Japanese law.
After a spike at the start of the last decade, successful pirate attacks on commercial vessels sailing off the Horn of Africa have diminished, deterred by an international deployment of warships to patrol the coast.
Somali pirates have been tried in countries including the Netherlands and South Korea.
Just 10 years? Wow have the Japanese have gone soft. The Somali pirates should be executed
From a brutal land that is always a stone’s throw from famine and warfare to climate controlled living quarters and three meals a day.
Yep, much too good for them. They should’ve been executed given the nature of the crimes and piracy laws in general. These savages know it, too. They should be resting comfortably in Davey Jones’ locker, along with osama bin laden (assuming he was really buried at sea or is actually dead).
When they get out of jail, they should be able to find work on the Steve Irwin or Bob Barker...
Notice that the Somali pirates haven’t attacked any Russian flagged ships lately? There is a video that shows Russian special forces taking back a captured Russian ship and then packing captured pirates up in their boat and sinking it with gunfire. Don’t think the word isn’t out in Somalia ...don’t mess with the Russians. Sinking all unidentified boats in the shipping lanes around Somalia on sight would quickly end the piracy problem.
Give them a taste of the “cat o’ nine tails, then keel haul the scurvy dogs! Send whatever’s left down to Davy Jones locker! Arrrrgh!
No offense, but you obviously know nothing of the nature of prisons in Japan. Nipponese prisons are a far cry from any sort of air-conditioned comfort you might have imagined, and unless things have changed since last I was in-country there, the only way you might enjoy it is if you have an overriding fondness for kilos of rice and fish-head soup making up the majority of your diet -not to mention hours of sweatstained labour every day you are there.
To stop piracy it must be punished by death. When would-be pirates see their brothers chewed up by sharks, they will stop.
“Just 10 years? Wow have the Japanese have gone soft. The Somali pirates should be executed”
“Should” is the operate word here. Heck, we and Europe were handing them over for trial to “Somali Authorities” whatever that means. I have to give the Japanese credit for at least disrupting their lives a bit.
Articles about piracy seldom mention how the rash of Somali pirates started. When the Somali state failed in the early 90’s there was no longer a central government to defend the countries sovereignty. With no one defending their rights fleets of fishing boats from China and other counties swooped into Somali territorial waters and fished the locals right out of work.
Tens of thousands of Somalis fled to places like Yemen, which tells you how bad things got. Many of those remaining, not having any means of income and no skills but seafaring, turned to piracy. Of course once they found out just how lucrative the prizes were with insurance companies paying tens of millions of dollars and no one resisting everyone got in the act including the Al Qaeda linked group Al Shabaab.
It took a long time for the rest of the world to get their act together and start sending organized fleets of warships to the area. Of course every country has their quirks about enforcement and other than the Russians (and maybe India) no one is outright killing the pirates. In fact a week or two ago four pirates brought to the U.S. were even allowed to appeal to the Supreme Court. The Brits actually captured a boatload of pirates and then when their legal team told them they lacked jurisdiction the Brits fed them and dropped them off at their village.
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