摘要：Pirates are literally getting away with murder. Modern pirates are attacking vessels, hijacking ships at gunpoint, taking hostages, and injuring and killing crew members.1 They are doing so with increasing frequency. According to the International Maritime Bureau (“IMB”) Piracy Reporting Center’s 2009 Annual Report, there were 406 pirate attacks in 2009—a number that has not been reached since 2003. Yet, in most instances, a culture of impunity reigns whereby nations are not holding pirates accountable for the violent crimes they commit. Only a small portion of those people committing piracy are actually captured and brought to trial, as opposed to captured and released. For example, in September 2008, a Danish warship captured ten Somali pirates, but then later released them on a Somali beach, even though the pirates were found with assault weapons and notes stating how they would split their piracy proceeds with warlords on land. Britain’s Royal Navy has been accused of releasing suspected pirates,7 as have Canadian naval forces. Only very recently, Russia released captured Somali pirates—after a high-seas shootout between Russian marines and pirates that had attacked a tanker carrying twenty-three crew and US$52 million worth of oil.9 In May 2010, the United States released ten captured pirates it had been holding for weeks after concluding that its search for a nation to prosecute them was futile. In fact, between March and April 2010, European Union (“EU”) naval forces captured 275 alleged pirates, but only forty face prosecution. Furthermore, when pirates are tried, they are often tried by Kenya or other African nations, rather than by the capturing nation. Kenya has entered into agreements with Canada, China, Denmark, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States to try the pirates these nations capture. Mauritius, Seychelles, and Tanzania have executed similar agreements to prosecute captured pirates. In an effort to aid prosecutions, Western states have pledged money—about US $10 million since May 2009—to alleviate the strain on the “poorly equipped and corrupt criminal justice system” and to cover the cost of transporting witnesses, training police and prosecutors, and upgrading prisons and courts.16 In fact, in late June 2010, the United Nations Office on Drug and Crimes (“UNODC”) used funds from donor nations to help open a new high-security courtroom in Mombasa, Kenya to prosecute pirates.17 But why are Western states refusing to prosecute pirates on their own soil even though they—more so than less-developed nations—have
