Can there be International Law?

How can one enforce international law on the water? Or worse yet in law-less Somalia? The answer is not guards and safe passage ways, the answer is an international law which would give the pirates some type of discipline and punishment (Foucault) Currently there is no risk to pirating. Even if captured, which is highly unlikely, the two pirate attempts thwarted last week by the Indian navy did not capture the pirates, there is no standard to punishment.

But can there be international law? I don't believe so. Where would one extradite the captured pirates? to the nation who caught the pirates, to the nation of the flagged ship (not that that has any relevance to the ship at all) to the home country of the owners of the ship? Who punishes? Can we have an international tribunal? That would be the most effective measure, but that in and of itself is its own horror show.

There is also the problem of labelling. What exactly is a pirate attack? The UNCOLS has a stated definition.

1. “any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation committed for private ends by the crew or passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed

   1. On the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft.

   2. Against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction or any State

2. Any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft.

3. Any act inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in sub-paragraphs a or b.

(Article 101: United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Seas 1982)

This is a very clear definition, but the problem here is that certain acts can be labeled differently and will not come under the definition of piracy. Is the recent Sirius Star attack piracy or terrorism? Do the pirates have other ends for Sirius Star than just money? Couldn't that ship be used for terrorism? Are the Somali pirates doing this for private ends? Is it not a 'social movement' against the lack of regulation of fishing? Some pirates are using their gains to help the local infrastructure and schools, is that still piracy? Such a strict definition is problematic for many reasons.

The Achille Lauro case is an excellent case of why this definition has been problematic in the efforts against piracy, particularly because of the “official definition” of what a pirate attack is. In October of 1985, the Achille Lauro, a passenger liner, set sail from the port of Alexandria to Port Said in Egypt. Four men in connection with the Palestine Liberation Front hijacked the ship and held the passengers and the crew hostage with intention to conduct a terrorist attack in the port of Ashdod. (Snoddon 2007)When the potential attack was thwarted, the hijackers/ pirates/ terrorists, executed a Jewish- American wheelchair bound passenger Leon Klinghoffer and threw his body off the ship. (Achille Lauro 2008) The Egyptian government negotiated with the hijackers and the ship returned to Port Said. The Egyptian government then offered safe passage to the hijackers with a flight out of the county but the flight was intercepted by a U.S. Navy aircraft and the flight was forced to land at a NATO base in Italy. Once in Italy, the Italian government refused to extradite the criminal to the United States. The act of hijacking the ship and killing a passenger was not labeled as piracy because the ends of the attack were for political purposes; therefore the international courts had no jurisdiction. (Gottschalk 2000)

The labeling of the attack on the Achille Lauro defined the jurisdiction of the case and changed the potential outcome of the case. Although the four hijackers were tried in Italy, Abu Abbas, the founder and leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, left the jurisdiction of Italy and was tried in absentia, but was not captured until the 2003 invasion of Iraq. (Achille Lauro 2008) Had the international legal community been able to label the incident as piracy, as the United States did, the United States would have been able to arrest the pirates under 18USC, sub. Sec. 1651 “Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life” (Section 1651. Piracy under law of nations 2004)