Somali pirates to 439 years in prison each for their role in the 2009 hijacking of a Spanish fishing boat in the Indian Ocean.Spain's National Court on Tuesday found Abdou Willy and Raagegeesey Adji Haman guilty on charges ranging from kidnapping to violent robbery and sentenced them to 439 years in prison each, a Press TV correspondent reported.
The court also ordered the two Somalis to pay each of the fishermen who were on board Alakrana fishing boat USD 148,000 (EUR 100,000) in damages.
Somali pirates hijacked MS Alakrana in the Indian Ocean in October 2009. The 36 crew members, including 16 Spaniards, were later released by pirates after spending seven weeks in captivity.
| So that'd be 36 times 100,000... carry the seventeen plus three... How much will they get if they hock their flip-flops? Look, these gentlemen are crew, not organizers -- they haven't anything besides the small change in their pockets. |
The Spanish court said there was no doubt that state institutions paid the ransom. The government has denied this.
"The government has already said it did not pay a ransom and I reiterate that," Spain's Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez told news hounds on Tuesday.
Rampant piracy off the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia has made these waters among the most dangerous in pirate activity.
The Gulf of Aden, which links the Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea, is the quickest route for more than 20,000 vessels traveling annually between Asia, Europe and the Americas.
However,
The well-oiled
However...
attacks by heavily armed Somali pirates on speedboats have prompted some of the world's largest shipping firms to switch routes from the Suez Canal and reroute cargo vessels around southern Africa, leading to climbing shipping costs.
Somalia has been in strife for the past three decades. Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, it has been embroiled in a bitter civil war for years.
The country does not have a functioning government and the authority of the so-called Transitional Federal Government is limited mostly to the areas around the capital Mogadishu.