UAE vessel in third and now deadly incident off the Somali coast

The death comes amid fears that increasingly aggressive pirates and the growing use of armed private security contractors onboard vessels could fuel increased violence on the high seas. The handling of the case may have legal implications beyond the individuals involved in Tuesday’s shooting, reports AP.

WHO WILL SIGN RESPONSIBLE ?

“This will be scrutinized very closely,” said Arvinder Sambei, a legal consultant for the U.N.’s anti-piracy program and told AP: “There’s always been concern about these (private security) companies. Who are they responsible to?”
Sambei said the case could become legally complicated. Investigators would have to establish who had jurisdiction — the flag the vessel was flying, its owners or the nationality of the contractors — and who was responsible for the security contractors in order to set up an independent inquiry, she said. “The bottom line is somebody has been killed and someone has to give an accounting of that,” he said.

The vessel sports as “registered owner” SHAHMIR MARITIME of St Vincent & The Grenadines – another briefcase office -, while BIYAT INTERNATIONAL from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates serves as ship-manager and Inter Gulf Marine of UAE usually play the role of the shipping and cargo manager. With this onion-routed layers of confusing responsibilities it will be interesting to see who takes the responsibility for hiring the armed men onboard, to see if they had permission to carry arms in Somali waters from the Somali government and who from the “guns-for-hire” will finally admit to have shot and killed the Somali man.

A statement by the Spanish Ministry of Defense said the Spanish warship ESPS NAVARRA had intercepted two skiffs and a larger vessel believed to be a pirate mothership. Spanish forces arrested the six remaining pirates, took custody of the pirate’s body and sunk the larger boat, it said.
The two smaller skiffs had many bullet holes in them, the statement added.

Spain was trying to reach the Somali government to hand over the body and get the cargo ship’s crew to identify the detained suspects as their attackers. Spain was also trying to reach the ship’s owner so formal charge of piracy could be laid and the detainees turned over to the Seychelles or Kenya under an agreement the two countries have with the EU.
All personnel onboard the ALMEZAAN are reported to be well.

Violent confrontations between ships and pirates are on the rise. Crews are becoming increasingly adept at repelling attacks by pirates in the dangerous waters of the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden and many ship owners are using private security. But pirates are becoming more aggressive in response, shooting bullets and rocket-propelled grenades at ships to try to intimidate captains into stopping, Katharine Houreld of AP notes.

ESCALATION CONTINUES

Several organizations, including the International Maritime Organization (IMO), ECOTERRA Intl., numerous shipping bodies, the Seafarers Assistance Programme and the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) as well as the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), have expressed fears that the use of armed security contractors could encourage pirates to be more violent when taking a ship, warning that it may be more likely for the Somalis from now on to open fire at distance with RPGs (Rocket Propelled Grenades) or heavy calibre machine guns.

Sailors have been hurt or killed before but this generally happens by accident or through illness. There has only been one known execution of a hostage despite dozens of pirate hijackings.

Armed security teams are increasingly common. Adrian McCourt of Watkins Superyachts commented in our recent survey “Ship/yacht plus firearms = zero hijacking” citing a case of an approached ship with an armed team onboard. One of them simply gave a “cheery wave” and that from an armed man was enough to earn an acknowledging wave from the baddie who then sheered away. Given this, it would seem that armed protection on ships and yachts is here to stay.

International navies have killed about fifty and injured over twenty Somalis and hundreds more are believed to have died at sea, either by drowning or through dehydration when their water and fuel runs out, but this incident is the first time that a privately armed employee of a shipping company killed an alleged attacker in the Somali waters.

So far, laws governing private security contractors have generally reacted to specific abuses rather than attempting to prevent such abuses, said Patrick Cullen, an international relations lecturer at the Barcelona-based International Politics Institute and the co-author of an upcoming book on private maritime security companies. “Regulating maritime security companies is a very gray area,” he told AP.

There’s currently no regulation of private security on board ships, no guidelines about who is responsible in case of an attack, and no industrywide standards, said Roger Middleton of Chatham House.

“There’s no guarantee of the quality of individuals you are going to get,” said Middleton. “If you’re a shipping company, that could be legally concerning. It’s also concerning to everyone if you have individuals with guns and not much oversight out on the seas.”

Though in general this killing raises questions over who has jurisdiction over a growing army of armed guards on merchant ships flying flags from many nations, it is quiet clear that in this case the shooter as well as the attackers have to be tried by the High Court in Mogadishu, because based on Somalia’s still valid maritime law of 1973, merchant vessels can not carry arms in Somali waters without permission from the government of Somalia and an armed attack against a merchant vessel in Somali waters is likewise a crime.

THE WAR ON THE WATERS CAN’T BE WON

Anti-piracy officials freely admit that this is too large an area for patrols to be effective in deterring all potential hijackings, and warships are often called to intercept only after an attack is launched.

This has led to an explosion in the number of private security contractors being hired to put armed guards onboard ships passing through the northern Indian Ocean.

Experts say piracy is just one symptom of the general collapse of law and order in the failed state of Somalia, which has not had a functioning government in 19 years. They say attacks on shipping will continue as long as there is no central government capable of taking on the well-armed and well-paid pirate gangs.

The current measure – Navy or private – have not reduced the number of attacks, indicating that these are literally desperate men. This also shows that only a socio-political solution (along with a government for Somali which has lacked a functioning one for 19 years) will bring the current pirate scourge to an end.