Pirates to serve part of prison sentence back home
08.02.2010
Seychelles and its international partners are working on the possibility for pirates tried in Seychelles to be sent back home to serve part of their prison sentence.
This was said on Saturday in a press conference with Environment, Natural Resources and Transport minister Joel Morgan, foreign and commonwealth officer Katharine Shepherd, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) programme coordinator to counter piracy, Alan Cole and Edith Cowan University’s adjunct associate professor Glenn Ross.
Mr Morgan said such an arrangement will be very convenient for Seychelles as it is difficult for it to accommodate these pirates for long duration.
Ms Shepherd said there is a possibility that once pirates have been tried here, they may wish to be transferred back to their homeland to serve part of their sentence.
She said there is also the possibility of setting up an additional regional prosecution centre in Seychelles to prosecute pirates so their acts would not go unpunished.
She added however that the programme will also include further work on prison capacity and on the judicial system.
And the UNODC is also running a programme in Somalia, where most of the pirates hail from, to ensure the conditions would be right and they anticipate it will be possible in the next six to twelve months, she said.