Norwegian shipper: kill pirates 'on the spot'

[Albion]

OSLO, Norway – A Norwegian shipping magnate was strongly criticized Wednesday for suggesting that pirates captured off the Horn of Africa should be sunk with their skiffs or executed on the spot.

In a newspaper op-ed, the 79-year-old founder of the Stolt-Nielsen shipping group, Jacob Stolt-Nielsen, said history shows that fighting piracy requires a gloves-off approach.

"When (piracy) implies a great risk of being caught and hanged, and the cost of losing ships and weapons becomes too big, it will decrease and eventually disappear," Stolt-Nielsen wrote Tuesday in Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv.

"Pirates captured in international waters have always been punished by death, often on the spot," he wrote, arguing that modern navies should deal with the problem like Roman pirate hunter Pompey did more than 2,000 years ago.

"Not arrest them and say, 'naughty, naughty, shame on you,' and release them again, but sink their boats with all hands," Stolt-Nielsen wrote. "The pirates won't be frightened by being placed before a civilian court."

The article drew sharp criticism in Norway, a seafaring nation known as a peace broker in many of the world's armed conflicts and as the home of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Jacqueline Smith, president of the Norwegian Seafarers Union, described Stolt-Nielsen's views as "barbaric" and said killing pirates could endanger the 700 seafarers now held as hostages in Somalia.

Piracy in the busy shipping lanes off the African nation has flourished since its government collapsed in 1991.

Erik Lahnstein, state secretary at Norway's Foreign Ministry, said basic human rights must apply also to pirates, and noted that "even for the most gruesome crimes, we do not have death penalty in Norway."

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[Cato]

He's right.

[Groenewolf]

Just repost what I said on Skadi :

Fact is that placing them before a civilian court in the West will seem like heaven for them. And it is indeed a bit common sense, what else would be the use of sending naval vessels there to combat piracy. In all essence these people are short term thinkers. They do not value the risk of getting caught and being send to a court where they will be treated extremely well high.

If those pirates see their fellows being gunned down and their harbors bombarded then they might think that piracy has become a lot less profitable. Same thing as with the Barbary (Muslim) piracy against Europe. the soft approach did not work, it was only after we bombarded a few of their harbors and showed force that they stopped raiding our coasts. A lesson we must relearn.