KENYAN COURT ACQUITS SOMALIS OF PIRACY CHARGES

Coming on the heels of recent indication by the Kenya Government not to renew agreements with the United States and Europe allowing for the trial of Somali pirates captured off the Somali coast, a Kenya Court on Friday 5 November 2010 acquitted seventeen Somalis accused of piracy for attacking an Egyptian vessel, the MV Amira on May 13 2009.

The men who were arrested in the Gulf of Aden in a joint operation by US and South Korean Navies were the first defendants to be found not guilty under the arrangement whereby Nairobi tries piracy suspects on behalf of foreign governments.

“The prosecution has not proved its case against the accused persons beyond reasonable doubt as required by law, consequently, I find that the accused persons are not guilty of the offence with which they were charged and acquit them," said Magistrate Michael Kizito at a court in Kenya's Mombasa coastal city.

The magistrate did not say whether the suspects would be deported to Somalia.

Some 136 suspected Somali pirates, brought mainly by international navies deployed off Somalia since 2008, are being held in Kenyan prisons and dozens have been sentenced to jail terms.

The latest convictions were in September when a Mombasa court jailed 11 Somalis for five years each for piracy on a Liberian-flagged merchant ship in the Indian Ocean last year.

Kenya and the Seychelles are the only coastal countries to have agreed to try suspects handed over by the foreign navies.