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.” Stolt-Nielsen acknowledged that killing pirates could trigger a backlash against crews held hostage. “But you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. This is war and warfare costs lives,” he wrote.
Founded in 1959, Stolt-Nielsen’s company grew to become one of the biggest players in Norway’s large shipping industry. He stepped down as chairman two years ago but still serves on the board of directors.
The company issued a statement emphasizing that the comments in the article reflected “Mr. Jacob Stolt-Nielsen’s own personal opinion.” The company’s ships have been exposed to pirate attacks off Somalia’s coast and some of them now carry armed guards. Other ship owners have taken similar steps to protect their ships and their crews.
Somali pirates systematically abuse and even torture their hostages, according to the European Union Naval Force.
Meanwhile, in Somalia, the bodies of eight pirates killed in a commando raid last month on a South Korean freighter were brought to Mogadishu's airport, said Ibrahim Iman, the airport manager. South Korean commandos raided the chemical carrier Samho Jewelry and freed the crew of 21.
Halima Hassan, a sister of one of the dead pirates, said her brother was innocent and was killed as he was guarding the coast “from illegal fishing vessels.” Piracy attacks off Somali began in retaliation for international shipping vessels illegally shipping off the Somali coast, though the piracy industry has evolved into a multimillion dollar business with near daily attacks off East Africa’s waters.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency on Wednesday reported that a South Korean ship captain held by Somali pirates for four months plotted to escape by slipping sleeping pills into his captors’ drinks but failed to do so because his Kenyan chef feared retaliation.
The captain, Kim Dae-keun, was one of 43 sailors freed last week from captivity. The ship and its crew arrived in Kenya on Tuesday.
Kim said the pirates frequently used rifle butts to beat him and fellow crew members. Kim said the pirates also leveled their guns at the head of a ship engineer three times, accusing him of using too much ship fuel.
