Prosecuting Maritime Piracy: Conclusion: Is There a Case for an International Piracy Court?

Piracy returned as a serious international threat after two centuries of relative dormancy because the international community was unable to solve the problem of the failed state of Somalia. The Somali pirates have demonstrated that the pirate business model could be lucrative in the twenty-first century, and piracy is now proliferating to other countries faster than anti-pirate efforts can keep pace. As described throughout this book, the current international counter-piracy practices include using force in self-defense without attempting to capture pirates, disarming pirates and either setting them adrift or returning them to Somalia, and finally capturing pirates and turning them over to non-Somali courts for prosecution. Even with international assistance, it may be many years before Somalia will be able to provide fair and effective trials of accused pirates or be able to detain them in prisons that meet international standards, so 20 countries have currently stepped in to fill the void. The preceding chapters have identified the prospects and problems associated with trying maritime pirates in national courts around the globe using universal jurisdiction. Those challenges are perceived to be especially acute in cases of pirate financiers and kingpins. This concluding chapter, therefore, examines the idea of an internationalized tribunal as a final prosecutorial tool in the anti-piracy arsenal. To deal with difficult cases of international criminality, over the past two decades, the international community has established ad hoc international criminal tribunals (e.g., the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha), hybrid international criminal tribunals (e.g., the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Freetown and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia in Phnom Penh), regional international criminal tribunals (e.g., the Extraordinary African Chambers in Senegal), and internationalized domestic courts (e.g., the Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad and the War Crimes Chamber in Bosnia Herzegovina). Various experts have advocated each of those models as a solution to the challenges of prosecuting Somali and other maritime pirates.