After arresting the pirates from the Gulf of Aden, the navy is struggling with legalities as it tries to work out to whom the brigands are to be handed over.
NEW DELHI: The arrest of 23 pirates from the Gulf of Aden is giving sleepless nights to the Indian Navy, as it is struggling with the legalities of whom to hand the brigands to and how to ensure their prosecution.
The navy's guided-missile destroyer INS Mysore, which has been patrolling the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden, on Saturday arrested 12 Somali and 11 Yemeni nationals and seized their boats, a dhow and a skiff, after repulsing an attack on an Ethiopian vessel MV Gibe.
"The pirates have been on board the ship for nearly two days now. With no laws in place to prosecute them, we are having a hard time finding a way to deal with them," a senior naval officer said on the condition of anonymity.
"Though the warship is pretty large, the onus of having the pirates on board is large, from the number of mouths to be fed having increased to the security to be put in place for them," he said.
"At least three sentries have to be on guard or else these pirates may create a nuisance by fighting among themselves and inflicting injuries," the officer said.
One of the options the navy is mulling over is to disembark the pirates in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and hand them over to the French authorities. But nothing is clear as of now.
While escorting merchant vessels in the Gulf of Aden, the Mysore received a distress call from the MV Gibe at about 11am on Saturday. "MV Gibe reported that she was under attack by two boats closing in on her and firing small arms. MV Gibe opened retaliatory fire with small arms that were on board the vessel. The position reported by the merchant vessel was 13 nautical miles from the Mysore," an Indian Navy spokesman said.
The Mysore immediately altered course to close in on MV Gibe and launched her integral armed helicopter with marine commandos. "On sighting the helicopter and the Mysore, the pirate boats disengaged from MV Gibe and attempted to escape. The Mysore closed in on the vessels and ordered them to stop.
"The larger boat was a green-coloured dhow of 8-10 metres length. It had taken the second smaller boat, a skiff, under its tow. Subsequently, the name of the dhow was identified as 'Salahaddin' and its hull number as 758(2)," the spokesman said.
The Mysore's marine commandoes boarded the dhow at 12:30pm and carried out a search. Twenty-three pirates surrendered, the spokesman said.
A search of the dhow revealed a substantial cache of arms and equipment, including seven AK-47s and three other automatic rifles, 13 loaded magazines, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher along with rockets, cartridges, and grenades, three outboard motors, and a GPS receiver.
This is the third rescue that the Indian Navy has effected since it began its anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden early in November. On November 18, the navy earned worldwide accolades after the stealth frigate INS Tabar sank a Somali pirate vessel after coming under attack.
Ten days earlier, the Tabar had foiled an attempt by pirates to hijack two merchant vessels — one Indian and one Saudi Arabian.
Somali pirates have attempted 95 hijackings this year alone, a 75 per cent increase since 2007.
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