Subject: Operation Atalanta and Somali Piracy
Committee Member: What are the arrangements for dealing with pirates once captured in an EU operation? How do arrangements differ between different member states? What legal protections and guarantees are in place to ensure their rights are respected and upheld?
And what monitoring mechanisms are in place to ensure the countries that have agreed to receive and prosecute pirates, implement their commitments on human rights?
And on top of that, I want to ask you, how far does the protection of human rights of the pirates, perhaps, obstruct the operation and prevent its effectiveness? I mean there are two sides of the coin it seems to me. And it is all very well talking about the right's of the pirates, but if that is actually increasing the risk to legitimate sea goers then we are in some difficulty. Could you comment on both aspects?
Witness: Well just I mean on the latter point, a lot of that, behind that question lies the controversy at the beginning, where we were extremely reluctant to bring pirates back to the UK for trial, for fear that they would then claim refugee status. And so I, on behalf of the Foreign Office, approached the Kenyan Foreign Minister to secure his agreement to trails in Kenya.
And we are very clear, our policy is that we could not take, we would not allow transfer to third states, for prosecution, unless we are satisfied that they will not be subject to cruel treatment, the death penalty, or face a trail which is grossly unfair.
Now we, and our MOU with the Kenyan's which was signed by Lord West in Kenya in December, we have had one case so far, where HMS Cumberland captured eight pirates in late 2008, and they were then transferred to the Kenyan authorities on the basis of this agreement. That trail began in January and is currently underway, but our legal advisers are completely satisfied that we had got suitable guarantees on the standard of prisoner handling and sentencing.
Since then the Europeans have said gosh well wouldn't mind one of those agreements too. They have now negotiated basically the same MOU with the Kenyan's. Now that of course understandably has raised on the Kenyan side an alarm that they are going to get their whole court system clogged up with pirates, which given these numbers, you know, I hope would not be the case, but therefore the EU are now trying to negotiate a similar agreement with Tanzania so at least there are essentially two choices for where pirates might be taken.