Hiiraan Online
Saturday, March 5, 2016
NAIROBI (HOL) – Seven Somali men convicted of piracy by a Kenyan court have returned home Friday after serving 7 years jail sentences in the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa.
Somali pirates have once terrorized the Indian Ocean and high seas, seizing ships more often and secured hundreds of millions of ransom for ransom, just before the European Union sent an anti-piracy force that ended once borderless piracy attacks.
Having completed their jail terms, the seven Somali nationals continue to maintain their innocence, saying that they were victims of ‘unfair’ justice system which denied them of their basic rights.
Somali ambassador to Kenya Jamal Hassan who accompanied the former pirates to Kenya’s JKA airport urged them to sidestep any future piracy activities.
Hundreds of pirates have been arrested in recent years and now serving long jail terms in different countries and in prisons in the northern Somalia semiautonomous region of Puntland and the neighbouring breakaway republic of Somaliland.
The EU naval forces have largely brought the piracy to an end; however, experts warned that a new wave of illegal fishing by large trawlers in the once pirate-infested Somalia coastline after the piracy decline may help the return of piracy to the Indian Ocean.
A recent report by Secure Fisheries, a part of the One Earth Future Foundation campaign group, warned that those advances could be reversed if illegal fishing is not stemmed.