[leacturavar]

I don't care what the Pentagon says, but it's 'catch and release' in this case for sure:

The US sunk another pirate ship yesterday and let the captured pirates go.

U.S. Navy Ship Grabs More Pirates, Lets Them Go
Pirate Mother Ship Sunk, Captured Pirates Released in Small Skiffs
By DANA HUGHES and KIRIT RADIA
NAIROBI, Kenya April 2, 2010

A U.S. Navy ship has sunk a pirate "mother ship" in the Indian Ocean and captured 11 pirates, and then promptly let them go.

It was the second time within 24 hours that U.S. forces captured Somali pirates. Earlier Thursday, five pirates were taken into custody after they attacked a U.S. warship.

While those five pirates remain in custody, the 11 captured Thursday were allowed to leave in small skiffs after the mother ship was sunk. The action prompted a Pentagon spokesman to deny that the Navy had a "catch and release" policy regarding pirates.

. . . Pirates Captured and Released - ABC News

The linked article above concludes with this dilemma concerning the 5 captured pirate still aboard the USS Nicholas:

. . . It's not clear what the Navy intends to do with the pirates still in custody.

One option includes handing suspected pirates over to Puntland officials in Northern Somalia. Convicted pirate 31 year-old Ibrahim Nour told ABC News he was turned over by the French Navy, and is currently in a high-security prison in Bossaso, Puntland's largest port city. In Somalia, a conviction of piracy is often met with a death sentence, but Navy officials said there are questions over whether Somalia's weak government structure meets international justice standards.

So far only one pirate has been returned to the U.S. for prosecution. That pirate was the lone survivor of an attempt to kidnap Capt. Richard Philips after a bungled attempt to hijack his ship, the Maersk Alabama. Until a few days ago, Kenya was agreeing to prosecute captured pirates on behalf of other nations, but the deal is now blown up:

General News Kenya To Stop Prosecuting Somali Pirates Captured In International Operations
4/1/2010 4:12 PM ET

(RTTNews) - Kenya announced Thursday that it will not try any more pirates detained in international piracy operations off the coast of Somalia, accusing the international community of failing to keep up its obligations in sharing the burden in prosecuting and imprisoning the detained pirates.

"For the last two weeks we have declined to accept captured pirates from some of our friendly countries and told them to try it elsewhere," Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula announced at a press conference in Nairobi.

"We discharged our international obligation. Others shied away from doing so. And we cannot bear the burden of the international responsibility," the minister added.

. . .
Kenya To Stop Prosecuting Somali Pirates Captured In International Operations

See also:

allAfrica.com: Kenya: Nation Laments Pirates' Burden

Whew, a big round of hisses, whistles and boos goes out to the EU and others for blowing a very workable deal for handling captured pirates. They just found out that dumping captured pirates on Kenya and not honouring their side of the prosecution agreement with Kenya isn't as easy as dumping toxic and other waste into Somali coastal waters that, in conjunction with overfishing it, have helped cause the piracy problem itself.

IMO, on the preventative side, I believe the international community should put an end to the dumping and overfishing practices of numerous nations--especially the First World ones--who have taken advantage of Somalia's broken nation situation to dump their waste in its waters and overfish it. It helped cause the piracy problem as a result given the Somali fishermen have substantially lost their ability to make a living and created anger against those responsible for that. With that, attempts should be made to deal with the coastal Somalis to restore their legitimate means of making a living as best as possible (e.g., making local deals to protect their fishing rights and buy their catches, etc, offer trade in goods for catches, etc).

On the law enforcement side, it's now a clusterf**k. For example, 'catch and release' of pirates will only allow them to head back to shore and go back out again. IMO, that solves nothing in the Big Picture. For the US, bringing captured pirates back to the US for prosecution hasn't been expensive so far with only one captured pirate in New York awaiting trial, but it's going to start adding up with the increased enforcement if they are to be sent to the US for trial. For places like the EU, they can't turn them over to Somalia given it imposes the death penalty upon pirates unless they agree to waive that punishment. Somalia's 'government' is a mess insofar as power and problems, and they likely aren't too keen on now handling loads of captured pirates on their already big plate of problems. Thus, debates are now wide open for handling them.

So, lots of scenarios and evaluations are now in play for discussion, and I'd like to get a conversation going on the broader aspects of the topic insofar as thoughts, proposals, etc.