A group of alleged Somali pirates captured by the United States navy in March have been freed and returned home to lawless Somalia after the US declined to prosecute them, officials said on Tuesday.
Ten of 12 suspected pirates detained on March 18 after firing on US warships in the Indian Ocean off the Somali coast were handed over to the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) and repatriated at the weekend, they said.
”The United States decided not to prosecute these 10 individuals in the United States, they were returned instead to Somalia,” said an official with the US embassy in Nairobi, which was involved in the release of the suspects.
”We thank both the government of Kenya and the ICRC for their assistance in repatriating them to their home country,” the official told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity.
The 10 had been held on a US naval vessel off the coast of Kenya and were sent to the Kenyan port city of Mombasa on Saturday where they were turned over to the ICRC and sent back to Somalia, the official said.
The remaining two, both of whom were wounded when two US warships, the USS Cape St George and the USS Gonzalez, returned fire on their vessel, remain under treatment, the embassy official said.
”They will be repatriated when it is medically safe to do so,” the official said, adding that the body of one alleged pirate killed in the incident would be returned to Somalia after an autopsy.
According to the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet, they fired rocket-propelled grenades at US ships that were pursuing them.
US sailors retaliated with light arms and seized them and their vessel.
The embassy official gave no reason for the decision to release the men.
But the Fifth Fleet said it had been made after the suspects were ”screened for possible criminal activity and terrorist connections”.
”After careful consideration, it was determined by the US government that repatriation would be the most effective and appropriate course of action in this matter,” it said in a statement.
Warships from the United States, along with other maritime nations involved in the US-led war on terror, have been patrolling international waters off the Somali coast for some months to combat a surge in piracy.
Last month, Somali prime minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said his government and the United States had reached an agreement under which the US navy would patrol Somali waters but Washington denied any deal had been struck.
Somalia has had no functioning central administration since the 1991 ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre, and pirates have increasingly taken advantage of the lack of authority to prey along the 3 700km coast.
The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) has reported at least 41 attacks on ships off the Somali coast since mid-March of last year.
A separate group of alleged Somali pirates, captured by the US Navy on a hijacked Indian dhow in January, are now being tried in Mombasa, but Kenyan authorities are understood to have declined to prosecute those detained in March.
The US official said Washington remained committed to working with Somalia’s transitional government to restoring law and order to the anarchic nation.
”We are working with Somali officials to develop a greater ability to prosecute and imprison those involved in serious crimes, including international piracy,” the official said. – Sapa-AFP