After freeing captives, NATO releases pirates

When North Korea fired a long-range missile recently, President Obama denounced the act as breaking the rules and complained to the United Nations. Some scorned the President for his foolishness in placing any credibility with the UN to act in a way that would have any impact on North Korea.

Now the UN has shown its mettle in dealing with Somalian pirates. This will silence critics....

After freeing captives, NATO releases pirates

By TODD PITMAN and KATHARINE HOURELD ASSOCIATED PRESS NAIROBI, Kenya — NATO forces rescued 20 fishermen from pirates who launched the latest attack in the Gulf of Aden on Saturday, but let the Somali hijackers go because they had no authority to arrest them. The release underscored the difficulties of stopping the sky­rocketing piracy scourge in the Horn of Africa, where sea ban­dits also seized a Belgian­flagged ship carrying 10 foreign crew members and started hauling it toward Somalia. “There isn’t a silver bullet” to solve the problem, said Roger Middleton, a piracy expert at London-based think tank Chat­ham House. He said it’s com­mon for patrolling warships to disarm brigands, then free them because they rarely have jurisdiction to try them. Pirates have attacked more than 80 boats this year alone, nearly four times the number assaulted in 2003, according to the Malaysia-based Interna­tional Maritime Bureau. They now hold at least 18 ships and more than 310 crew hostage, an Associated Press count shows. The first attack Saturday oc­curred in the predawn dark­ness, when pirates hijacked the Belgian-flagged Pompei a few hundred miles north of the Sey­chelles, said Portuguese Lt. Cmdr. Alexandre Santos Fer­nandes, who is traveling with a NATO fleet patrolling further north in the Gulf of Aden. In a second attack later Sat­urday, pirates on a small white skiff fired small arms and rock­ets at a Marshall Islands­flagged tanker. Fernandes said the ship issued a distress call shortly after dawn but escaped. A Dutch frigate from the NATO force responded to the distress call and trailed the pi­rates to a Yemeni-flagged fish­ing dhow the brigands seized Thursday. The pirates climbed into the dhow, and Dutch marine com­mandos followed soon after, freeing 20 fishermen whose na­tionalities were not known. There was no exchange of fire, and Dutch forces seized seven automatic weapons and one rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Seven Somali pirates were briefly detained, but they were soon released.

They'll never come back.