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UK May Hold Pirates Without Legal Authority,
UK Guantanamo Bay Alleged, UN Silent
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
November 20 -- As Somali pirates
have recently seized ten ships including a Saudi super tanker, it
emerges that even
those pirates who are caught are in a legal limbo that neither the UN
Security
Council nor its Permanent Five members have been able to address. In
front of
the Council on Thursday, Inner City Press asked UK Ambassador John
Sawers to
confirm that the UK is holding Somali pirates, under what legal
authority, and
what will be done about the issue. Ambassador Sawers said, "I am not in
a
position to answer specific questions about that."
Sawers went
on to say that the UK is "playing a leading role in the elimination of
piracy from the coast of Somalia." The UK's own BBC has reported that
the
UK is holding pirates, and is finally trying to put them on trial in
Kenya. Why
Kenya? And in the interim, what is the legal authority under which the
UK has
held these captives? Could this be, to
coin a phrase, a little UK Guantanamo Bay?
This is not
to imply that pirates should not be put on trial and imprisoned. But
shouldn't a country like the UK be able to publicly articulate the
legal basis for the people it holds in custody?
UN's Gambari and UK's Sawers and
Miliband, imprisoned pirates and legal authority not shown
While in the past the Council has consider the coasts of Somalia, the
focus has only been on pirates -- and ineffectively at that -- not on
fishing violations by EU and other OECD states, nor the dumping of
toxic waste.
While the
Council on Thursday morning passed another resolution on Somalia, it
was not about
piracy. Rather it created a framework to later impose sanctions, on
"those
who block humanitarian access to victims," as French Ambassador
Jean-Maurice
Ripert put it.
After that
vote, a briefing was scheduled by the UN Department
of Political Affairs' Haile Menkerios, who was also in the absence of
DPA chief
Lynn Pascoe slated to brief on Zimbabwe and Western Sahara. The UN
Secretariat
has not said where Pascoe in fact is; Ban Ki-moon's Spokesperson's
Office on
Wednesday told Inner City Press that, contrary to the organization's
statements, no request for action has been received from the
International
Chamber of Shipping and InterCargo. Several Ambassadors asked, given
all these
conflicts, where is Ban Ki-moon?
Click here for Inner City
Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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