Interpol compiling Database of Personal Information on Somali Pirate Suspects

(Version anglaise seulement)

Interpol is compiling a database of fingerprints, photographs and other personal information on Somali pirate suspects to help fight piracy at sea, the agency said Wednesday.

The information can be accessed by any of the agency's 187 member countries.

"Without systematically collecting photographs, fingerprints and DNA profiles of arrested pirates and comparing them internationally, it is simply not possible to establish their true identity or to make connections which would otherwise be missed," Interpol's Executive Director of Police Services, Jean-Michel Louboutin, said in a statement released Wednesday at the agency's headquarters in Lyon, France.

Despite international patrols, piracy has exploded in the Gulf of Aden and around Somalia's 1,900-mile (3,060-kilometer) coastline — the longest in Africa.

Pirates are able to operate freely because Somalia has had no effective central government in nearly 20 years. Most public institutions have crumbled, and the weak, U.N.-backed government is fighting an Islamic insurgency.

The international community is grappling with how and where to try captured pirates. The United States, Britain and the European Union have signed agreements allowing for piracy suspects to be handed over to Kenya for trial.

Kenya, which is holding more than 100 piracy suspects from neighboring Somalia, has agreed to send photographs and fingerprints from those being held here on piracy charges, Interpol said. Interpol's bureau in the Seychelles islands already has provided information on its 23 suspects.

Many nations are wary of hauling in pirates for trial for fear of being saddled with them after they serve out prison terms. There is talk of setting up a special piracy tribunal there akin to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

There are doubts that Kenya, which is still recovering from postelection turmoil in 2007 that left more than 1,000 people dead, would be able to handle the costly and complicated task of trying all or even most cases that emerge from the exploding piracy crisis in the Indian Ocean, reports VOA.

Human rights and civil liberties defenders fear that the alleged Somali pirates are being misused to establish rendition programmes and the exchange of personal, biometric and DNA data between uncontrolled agencies even before any conviction or proof of guilt as standard practice.

Source:Ecoterra, June 17, 2009

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