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Kenya/Somalia - RFI interview with alleged pirates

We were framed, say Somali pirates

Article published on the 2009-10-15 Latest update 2009-10-16 11:20 TU

Suspected Somali pirates in court in Mombassa 8 October 2009(Credit: Reuters)

Suspected Somali pirates in court in Mombassa 8 October 2009
(Credit: Reuters)

Seven Somalis on trial for piracy in Kenya say they are really fishermen who were framed by the US navy. Abdi Kheye and six accomplices were arrested in February by a US warship patrolling Somalia's pirate-infested coast.

Report: accused Somali pirates say they're just fishermen

16/10/2009 by Christopher Gerard

By Christopher Gerard in Mombasa
 
US authorities say the alleged pirates tried to hijack a commercial barge en route to Britain. A cache of AK-47 machine guns and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher was found on board their boat, authorities say. 

But, visited in jail by RFI, the men say the weapons were planted. 

Sitting in an orange jump suit and surrounded by khaki-clad prison guards, alleged pirate leader Abdi Kheye said that the US sailors who captured them planted the weapons in their boat. 

"We don't know anything about them. The only things we have had to assist us in our daily life is fishing - which we have been doing throughout from the time {Somalia's] central government fell."

Kay says he and his shipmates have had no contact with their families and country since their internment. 

“Our relatives, our families, all of them are not aware. In fact, they think we have already died a long time ago. We only came to know [what we are being accused of  when] we were brought to this Kenyan court and they started reading to us that we are pirates.”

“The greatest violation which is here is someone has been arrested in [one] country and brought to a different country…detained in a cell, kept without informing their relatives or even their country,” Kay said.

At his Mombasa office, defence lawyer Francis Kadima says it is unclear what international law is operating in the arrests. The EU has a formal agreement with Kenya to try suspected pirates, but it is not known whether the Americans do.
 
"What is the solution to this problem?," Kadima asks. "Is it just dumping these people in Kenya and sentencing them? [My clients] are being used by the warlords in Somalia - and nobody touches them."
 
The trial began last week in Mombasa's central law courts.  The men are the first batch of 100 suspected pirates being held in a nearby maximum security prison.
 
It has now been adjourned until November. 

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