Saturday, May 30, 2009

Russia hands over suspected pirates

One of the stories involving Somali pirates apparently ended rather quietly earlier in the month when Russia turned more than two dozen suspected pirates over to government officials from Iran and Pakistan.

Last month the Russian destroyer Admiral Panteleyev captured a motherload of 29 pirates after intercepting a pirate vessel that they believed a day earlier had attacked a Russian tanker off the coast of Somalia. But this presented Russian officials with a big problem - what to do with them?

The suspected pirates claimed to be from Iran and Pakistan (which also raises the possibility that the 'pirates' were really hostages being held by the actual Somali pirates), so in the end Russian authorities decided just to send the men back to their respective countries. The Russian Prosecutor General’s office though has given their support to a proposal from President Dmitri Medvedev that an international tribunal be established to put captured pirates on trial.
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