Seychelles will try Somali pirates

Seychelles will try Somali pirates Agencies

VICTORIA: Seychelles will try suspected Somali pirates after European guarantees they would be sent home to serve their sentences, a minister announced Saturday. Environment, Natural Resources and Transport Minister Joel Morgan said his government had told the European Union it would accept suspects for trial after receiving guarantees of their transfer home to serve their terms. "Seychelles had said very early last year that we wanted to help in the fight against piracy. But we wanted a transfer agreement because it would be difficult for us to accommodate pirates for a long time," he told reporters. The new deal means suspected pirates caught by the European Union's naval mission in the region can be brought to justice in Seychelles. The 85,000-strong Indian Ocean archipelago's new role should not kick in for another six months though as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) revamps the only prison in the island nation. The UN agency is also working on the rehabilitation of two prisons in northern Somalia. The Seychelles judiciary is also in the process of adapting laws to create a charge of "conspiracy to commit an act of piracy." The new provisions are to be examined by Parliament later this month. One of the main shortcomings in the legal battle against Somali piracy has been the difficulty to charge suspects not caught red handed despite being in possession of piracy equipment. Seychelles currently holds 11 suspected pirates detained in December 2009 by the country's coastguard. Since mid-2009, Somalia's army of pirates have drifted from the now heavily patrolled waters of the Gulf of Aden to launch the bulk of their attacks much further out in the Indian Ocean. Seychelles, whose economy is highly dependent on tourism and tuna-fishing, has asked for international cooperation to curb the threat of Somalia's ever more brazen ransom-hunting sea bandits.