Piracy suspects challenge court

2006-02-06 15:04

Mombasa - Ten alleged pirates captured last month by the United States navy off the coast of lawless Somalia on Monday challenged the jurisdiction of a Kenyan court, which had charged them with piracy.

Lawyer Mohammed Khatib said: "This court has got no jurisdiction to hear the matter", arguing that since the suspects were captured by US sailors in Somali waters aboard an Indian dhow, Kenya had no authority to try the men.

Khatib said the proper venue for the trial - the first test of Kenya's piracy law - would be Somalia itself or India, where the ship they allegedly commandeered was registered.

Presiding Mombasa magistrate Hanna Ndungu adjourned the case until Wednesday and said she would hear arguments on the defence motion to dismiss the charges.

Men 'clad in jumpsuits'

Khatib also raised objections to military-style green overalls in which the Somali defendants had been dressed since they were brought to Kenya's Indian Ocean port of Mombasa by the US military on January 29.

Khatib said: "We intend to raise the issue of the clothes they are wearing because it seems they have already been convicted", noting that the men were clad in the jumpsuits after they were charged with piracy on Friday.

Prosecutor Margaret Mwangi said Kenyan authorities had nothing to do with the dress of the men, who denied the piracy charges and claimed to have been illegally abducted by the US while fishing.

Merchant ship attacked

The US Navy's Fifth Fleet captured the men on January 21, about 85km off Somalia's central eastern coast, a day after unsuccessfully attacking a merchant ship the previous day.

They were aboard an Indian dhow whose 16-member crew told US sailors that the gunmen who were using their boat as a "mother ship" to launch attacks on other vessels had hijacked them.

The US seizure of the alleged pirates came amid a surge in hijackings off the coast of Somalia, where the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) had reported 37 attacks on ships since mid-March of last year.

Somalia had had no functioning central administration since the 1991 ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre and pirates had increasingly taken advantage of the lack of authority to ply the 3 700km coast.

- AFP