• 12 comments
• Print
• Email
• Tweet
• Reset

Piracy attracts youth with the allure of getting rich, but seldom do they think about the consequences it can have on their futures and the lives of their loved ones.

Pirates caught by marine security forces face years in prison, and their families are often left destitute with few options for income and a reputation for being tied to piracy.

Amal Ahmed Hassan, 24, lives in Garowe with her two children. Their father, Ali Jama, has been held in a prison in Aden, Yemen for five years.

"Jama was arrested by marine forces in 2008. To my knowledge, he was a fisherman, but now I hear that he is being detained because of piracy activities," she told Sabahi, adding that he has not yet been tried in court for his alleged crimes.

Hassan said she spent a month looking for her husband after he was detained because she had no idea where he was. Eventually, he was allowed to call her from prison. "I knew nothing about piracy but I was told that he was arrested at sea with other men. After speaking with Jama for a while, he told me that his friends bullied him into accompanying them. These friends are in jail with him now," she said.

"It is the first time he ever engaged in those activities," she said. "I communicate with him once a week, but his imprisonment has introduced us to waves of worry and I now have to deal with all the needs of the family that Jama used to deal with. I and the rest of the household miss him greatly."

"When I saw that I was faced with the responsibility for the livelihood of the family, I decided to look for work in Garowe. It was impossible because I did not have any skills or work experience," she said.

Hassan learned hospitality skills at a societal development organisation called Samafa, where she now works as a greeter. "I am now able to handle life [alone], even though life in Africa is better with a father and a mother who handle life together," she said.

"I do not think piracy is a good thing; I believe it is something against religion that youth should stay away from. Jama himself told me he regrets the ease with which he found himself involved in these activities, unaware of the dangers he might encounter," she said.

A lonely life for pirates in foreign prisons

The heyday of piracy is over. The International Maritime Bureau announced last month that piracy attempts decreased in the first half of 2012 as international naval forces patrolling the seas off Somalia stepped up their efforts to stop pirates from hijacking ships.

Nonetheless, thousands of youth who engaged in piracy during its more popular periods are now wallowing in foreign prisons, and only some of them have been sentenced.

Muse Abdi, 33, said has been held in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison in Nairobi since 2009 after marine forces arrested him with 14 others in the Gulf of Aden. He said he is due to be released in 2013.

"I am a person who has fallen behind in the world and is living a dark life away from his family and relatives while imprisoned in a foreign country," he told Sabahi by telephone. "The people of this country, you will see them being visited by their relatives and being brought things, but no one visits us."

"I would not advise youth to engage in piracy activities and I would tell those already in it to leave it," he said. "One feels alive when one is free. The only thing I seek now is the freedom to go outside."

Abdi began engaging in piracy in 2007 after he saw foreign ships looting Somali shores. In 2008, he was among a group of men who hijacked an Egyptian-owned ship, which was held for more than two months and reportedly ransomed for about $2 million.

He said he did his best to safeguard the welfare of the hijacked crew, but some of his compatriots were not so kind. "Every ship is hijacked with many employees, but we mostly protected their rights and most were not harmed. Nonetheless, some harmed them -- people are not the same," he said. "Today I realise that piracy is one of the worst crimes that a human can commit."

Abdi said he was arrested while looking for another ship to hijack, but never succeeded.

Somalia cracks down on piracy

While many Somalis are held in foreign prisons for piracy, Somalia has also increasingly cracked down on the illegal activity in its own territory. In June, then-President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed requested arms and resources from international donors to fight piracy, saying the country could end the crime within a year.

The Somaliland administration has been increasingly active in seeking the repatriation of Somali nationals. In February, Somaliland approved anti-piracy and extradition laws, providing a legal framework to prosecute and jail pirates. In April, 17 convicted pirates were transferred to Somaliland to finish serving their sentences.

The regional administration of Puntland has also engaged in robust anti-piracy activities and the central prison in Bosaso houses a number of Somali pirates. Mohamed Yusuf Dahir, 25, recently completed a three-year prison sentence there.

"I was arrested in 2009 in Bargal the very first time I sought to engage in those activities," he told Sabahi. "I was forced into it by the poverty facing my family and lack of work in the country, in addition to my friends earning hundreds of thousands of dollars every day."

But after his stint in prison, he has avoided piracy and instead sought out manual labour to earn a living. "[Piracy] is a life that is never good. Even now, you can feel that people hate the act of piracy," he said. "You will hear that a car belongs to a pirate, that a woman is married to a pirate who is imprisoned abroad or that a house belongs to a pirate. People run away from them."