John Burnett, author of Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas, has more on Britain's new approach to piracy.
On April 11, French commandos went in with guns blazing and captured a gang of pirates who days earlier had hijacked a luxury cruise ship, the Ponant, and held the crew for ransom. This was the French solution to a crime wave that has threatened international shipping off Somalia; those of us who have been on the business end of a pirate’s gun can only applaud their action.
The British government on the other hand, to the incredulity of many in the maritime industry, has taken a curiously pathetic approach to piracy. While the French were flying six of the captured pirates to Paris to face trial, the British Foreign Office issued a directive to the once vaunted Royal Navy not to detain any pirates, because doing so could violate their human rights. British warships patrolling the pirate-infested waters off Somalia were advised that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain and that those who were returned to Somalia faced beheading for murder or a hand chopped off for theft under Islamic law.
According to Burnett, Britain's approach is not so popular (at least not with those threatened by pirates.
The British fear of breaching the human rights of pirates has not gone down well in the maritime community. Andrew Linington, the spokesman for Nautilus, a British-Dutch seafarers trade union, has called the Foreign Office’s policy “a get out of jail card” for pirates.
“We despair,” Mr. Linington told me. “We are meant to be a major maritime country. The U.K. is heavily dependent on maritime trade — 95 percent of trade comes and goes by sea. Yet the Foreign Office has its head in the sand. It is just wishing the problem would go away.”
The British attitude has come a long way since the days when pirates were chained to pilings at Wapping and left there until the tidal water of the Thames ebbed and flowed over the bodies three times. So much for Britannia ruling the waves.
Related Posts (on one page):
- "Captain Kidd, Human-Rights Victim":
- "[Don't] Detain Pirates Because Doing So May Breach Their Human Rights"?
Rule Britannia!
Britannia rule the waves.
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.
The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must in their turn, to tyrants fall,
Must in ,must in, must in their turn, to tyrants fall,
While thou shalt flourish, shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
(Chorus)
Rule Britannia!
Britannia rule the waves.
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves
And isn't the United Kingdom a signatory to the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation, under which state parties are obligated to take perpetrators of pirate-like acts into custody for the purposes of criminal proceedings? Granted, the coast of Somalia is not part of British territorial waters, but the reason given by the Foreign Office would also apply to foreign pirates in British waters, or in cases where the territorial party rescinds jurisdiction, in which case the UK may assert jurisdiction in ways provided for by the Convention or via jus cogens. (Something the FO prefers not to do.) What an abdication of responsibility.
And what a climb down from Pinochet. Shame.
Whoever wrote this decision must have taken Gilbert and Sullivan as an instruction manual. After he polished the handles so carefully....
That whirring sound you her is Winston Churchill spinning in his grave.
Wratts. :-(
The extradition of Pinochet into the murderous hands of his Communist political enemies was a definite black mark on the UK's human rights record. But this ruling at least equals it in depravity. I mean, I can sort of see their point, as I yield to no one in my contempt for Islamic 'justice'. But, heck, if the *French* can just try their arrestees in Paris, there's nothing stopping the British from doing the same - if the Brits are too cowardly to try Somali Muslims for piracy, they can just turn them over to their braver Gallic neighbors. (And I can't believe I just wrote that.)
Well, they don't need to be, they're already 'subjects'.
Presuming the Brits would prosecute, of course.
@wm13: Can I try?
The rule is simple: we don't extradite (or deport) people to countries if that leads to them being killed, tortured or otherwise physically harmed. So once these pirates are in the UK, they're staying. Even if they get sentenced to a prison sentence, upon their release the UK government would have to allow them to stay. Since that is understandably too much hassle, this seems to be the simpler solution: Shoot at them if need be for your assignment, but in no circumstances bring them back to the UK. (Or even on board a UK vessel.) Makes sense, doesn't it?
@ras: Anyone who arrives in Britain can ask for asylum, which is one of the reasons why citizens of many countries need visas. Same in the US. No need to commit a crime.
As part of what could be described as the "balkanization crowd"*, I understand that the British government cannot hand people over to countries where they will fact torture, but is there really no other remedy? This is hard for me to believe considering that the Dutch under Verdonk were sending homosexual asylum seekers back to Iran with a straight face - the standard for the ECHR for this sort of thing is quite high, and in particular, a death penalty is allowed, so there should be no problem with an extradition to somalia even if they would face such consequences, so long as other guarantees concerning torture can be obtained. I understand the Foreign Office's concern because I can spin a legal theory whereby they get in trouble, but I can also make a very plausible case the other way. The real problem may be that the Foreign Office just does not want to deal with it - they may believe they would win in the end, but fighting the litigation would itself be so costly and time consuming that they wish to avoid the trouble. And to that I say hogwash!
A larger issue, of course, is what should be done about piracy. Indeed, bringing them back to jail cells in the UK only seems somewhat effective given that the rest of their life may not be so great - worthwhile, in other words, on incapacitation theory, but less so on the basis of deterrence or retribution. Reminiscent of the issues that the U.S. faces in dealing with illegal immigrants involved in criminal drug rings - there is no easy solution when you are dealing with receiving states with crummy criminal justice systems.
* on the balkanization crowd point, I consider it a sad day for the conservative movement when those who oppose the governments' seizure of a power to torture are lumped together and dismissed so easily. I've passionately defended the 2nd Amendment and advocated abolishing of large swaths of the Federal Bureaucracy on the basis of constraining the government's ability to invade our liberty. Now I'm told that those principles don't matter if it's something that the government finds really important? Phooey. A threat to liberty is a threat to liberty is a threat to liberty - all people who have lived under tyrannies have begun their sad voyage believing that the first steps were justified because of external threats. If we lose our liberty, it will be no different.
@Vermando: About the Iranian homosexuals: the foreign office, and in particular (one hopes) the embassy in Teheran, concluded that, as a matter of fact, they would be in no or little danger. So they got sent back. But if memory serves there was a hefty debate about it in parliament. Parliament just didn't have the ability to verify the government's claim on this point.
In other words, the government did not disclaim the principle that they could not be sent back if that would put them in danger, the government instead argued that they were not, in fact, going to be in danger.
That seems a rather cowardly decision, but it's better than, say, denying asylum to women subject to genital mutilation or forced marriage, or imposing interminable secret detention without trial for suspected offenders, both of which are longstanding US practice.
We wouldn't want to violate their human rights, but if the pirates sailed from a Somali under an inhumane regime and are returned to a Somalia under an inhumae regime after no intermediate stops in Britain or any other country, how does that constitute "deportation"?
I do see the trajectory of "enlightenment" in recent decades is truly a wondrous thing.
My argument is that the risk of torture to a pirate released to Somalia is not demonstrably higher than that of a homosexual released to Iran. This is particularly so, I think, since a large part of the claim that the homosexuals' Iranian persecution claim is based on the fact that the Iranian authorities often execute homosexuals based on trumped up charges such as rape or kidnapping, employ entrapment to ensnare them, and employ methods of torture and execution deliberately designed to cause prolonged and increased pain. I do not see how the first two of these concerns would apply to a pirate captured fairly and convicted under due process of law - by the applicable articles and judgments of the ECHR, so long as there is not a high risk that they would be subject to actual torture, but only to imprisonment and perhaps execution, then the UK should be in the clear. I could be wrong on this, though, so I welcome clarification.
Final note of detail: the execution is of course problematic since the UK has voluntarily adopted some ECHR articles banning the death penalty, but apart from Soering, which would not allow extradition to the US because of the high probability that he would be subject to the "death penalty phenomenon", I do not know of a case which says that the UK cannot hand over someone for execution by their national authorities if that person receives a speedy execution and is not otherwise subject to torture while in prison (great stock was put in Soering on the likelihood of the man's homosexual rape in American prisons, for example). This was, I believe, the rationale whereby Saddam Hussein could not gain relief from the ECHR, though this may have also been because we were the ones who actually handed him over to the Iraqis. I could be wrong or behind in the latest developments in this area, though, so I welcome clarification.
@Vermando: I'm away from my textbooks at the moment, but my recollection is that the categorical ban on the death penalty in the 6th and 13th protocol mean that no one can be extradited, handed over, deported or whatever else one chooses to call it if they run the risk of being executed. (@A.Zarkov: to the extent that it is possible for anything to be "unconstitutional" in the UK, what you're proposing would be very unconstitutional.)
One would imagine that Saddam could not obtain relief because a) it was the Americans detaining him, and b) under art. 1 of the Convention it did not apply to him, since he was not in the jurisdiction of a High Contracting Party. (In an earlier comment I was deliberately vague about what it would take to bring someone within the perview of the Convention. As I understand it, in the US, someone has to get their feet on dry land, so being on board a US Navy is ship doesn't count, but I wouldn't be so sure whether the same rule would apply under art. 1 ECHR.)
I think it's well within the power of the UK parliament to change the law. Such an act might run afoul of some treaty, but that's fixable too.
PIC
In other words: is it government that produces such brutal responses- or does one require sissy British rule to avoid the death penalty?
The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
@A.Zarkov: Exactly, which is why I wrote what I wrote. For the time being, though, they have the Human Rights Act, which is usually included in the body of statutes that, together with the various customs, make up the Constitution of the UK.
@liberty: I'm actually not sure what the rule is for the situation where they would be in danger without law or real government if they were sent back. I suspect that, too, would be a problem.
Latest news: The Spanish have joined the fun.
Do they celebrate "Talk Like a Pirate Day" in the UK?
If the Brits had a good Major General, he could take care of the pirates forthwith - so long as he was the very model of a modern major general
Statement by the Slovenian Presidency (of the Council):
To me, the real problem is that the UK no longer imposes a death penalty or a "life sentence" that actually is for life. If the only way a convicted pirate could leave the British prison system was as a corpse, there wouldn't be an issue with asylum.