Wednesday, November 01, 2006
The sentences, which can be appealed, were handed down in this Indian Ocean port city by Magistrate Beatrice Jaden who last week found all 10 guilty of piracy for hijacking the Indian vessel from which they were seized in January.
"The accused persons will be sentenced to seven years imprisonment," she said in her brief ruling that defense lawyers vowed to appeal.
The defense had unsuccessfully argued throughout the eight-month trial that Kenya had no jurisdiction to try the men because they had been captured by the United States in international waters off Somalia's coast.
"We shall appeal against this judgement," said defense attorney Hassan Abdi. "We want several issues to be addressed in the High Court, especially the one on jurisdiction.
All 10 defendants had pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawfully detaining the Indian dhow, claiming they were simple fishermen who were mistakenly identified as pirates.
But in her October 26 verdict, Jaden rejected their protests of innocence as well as their lawyers' jurisdictional arguments.
The Men were convicted of hijacking the dhow, the Safina Al Bisaraat, threatening the lives of its 16-member crew and demanding a ransom of $50 000 for their release.
They were seized by the destroyer USS Winston S Churchill, attached to the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet, on January 21 about 85km off the Somali coast a day after using the dhow in an unsuccessful attempt to hijack another ship.
Their capture came amid a surge in hijackings and attacks on commercial shipping, including one on a luxury US cruise liner, off the Somali coast, that prompted dire warnings from the International Maritime Bureau (IMB).
The situation along the unpatrolled 3 700km Somali coast led Somalia's weak transitional government to appeal for international assistance to curb the attacks.
But piracy has ebbed since a powerful Islamist movement seized control of Mogadishu in June and then took several other Somali ports, including one known to be a pirate haven, implementing strict Sharia law.
Somalia has had no functioning central administration since the 1991 ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre.
Source: AFP, Nov. 1, 2006