Monday 15 February 2010

Press Release Somaliland Courts of Justice Prosecute Pirates

15th February 2010

Press Release

Source: Somalilandpress/AFP

Subject: Somaliland Pirate Prosecutions – 14th February – Somaliland Courts Prosecute Pirates – From Coastguard 19th December Arrests

SOMALILAND: Somali pirates get 15-year Sentences – Officials Confirm.

14th February 2010 - BERBERA, (Somaliland) — The Court in Somaliland handed out 15-year prison sentences to 11 pirates on Sunday, the presiding judge said.

Prosecutors at the Court in Berbera, in the breakaway northern state of Somaliland, brought a number of charges against the men, including piracy and attempted armed kidnapping. They showed the court photos obtained from NATO naval forces showing the pirates when they were arrested last December.

The trial, which lasted a week, was finally concluded today after the evidence brought before the court showed that the eleven were involved in piracy and hijacking. The court finally announced its verdict — a jail term of 15 years each”, Osman Ibrahim Dahir, the presiding judge, told AFP by phone from Berbera.

The pirates were detained last December after they attacked an International Naval Force ship, mistaking it for a commercial ship off the Somali coast.

The International Naval Coalition Forces released them after disarming them, but they were arrested against a few days later by the Somaliland Coastguards who spotted them in a coastal village near the Somaliland border with Djibouti.

“Some of the pirates confessed their crimes while others were still reluctant to confess, but they were sentenced and sent to jail,” Jamal Abdikarin, security officer in Berbera told AFP by phone.

The Coastguard also recently prevented the Libyan owned (North Korean Flagged) hijacked vessel M/V RIM from entering the fishing town of Las Qoray, near the Somaliland/Puntland border to the east, but were unable to recapture the vessel before it entered Puntland territorial waters.



Editor’s Notes:

The Somaliland Coastguard (Maritime Police) is part of the Ministry of Interior of the Government of the Republic of Somaliland. Based in the Port of Berbera, they patrol and protect their population along 860Kms of Gulf of Aden Coastline, from the Djibouti border on the North-West, to the Puntland border to the North-East.

To date, the Somaliland Coastguard has arrested 61 Pirates, including those detained on 19th December, with 58 successfully prosecuted and 3 awaiting trial. Triton International Ltd is a Maritime Risk & Security Management Company based in London, who are the Official Training & Mentoring Partners of the Somaliland Coastguard and conduct both their Partnership and Commercial Operations from Hargeisa and the Port of Berbera in Somaliland. They are the representatives of the Somaliland Government, with the Coastguard at the International Maritime Organisation Contact Group for Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS) and work to raise both awareness and funding for the Coastguard and their Operations.

For Press Release information or any further details about the Somaliland Coastguard or Triton International Ltd, they can be contacted on:

Triton International Ltd:

Tel UK Direct: +44 207 193 0497
UK Mobile: +44 7818 092 244
UK Office: +44 207 193 9168
USA Office: +1 202 657 4918
Fax UK: +44 207 419 6332
E-Mail: Info@tritoninternationalltd.com
BerberaOps@tritoninternationalltd.com
VesselOps@tritoninternationalltd.com
Coastguard@tritoninternationalltd.com

www.tritoninternationalltd.com

Triton International Ltd is the Strategic Partners to the Somaliland Coastguard
and their Fight against Piracy.

Thursday 4 February 2010

Somaliland: The Pirate Hunting Coast Guard

June 23, 2009

by Tristan McConnell, for the Pulitzer Center

Somaliland Coast Guard on patrol off the coast of Berbera.

Until pirates showed up on the world’s media radar few people would have been able to point to Somalia on a map. That all changed in April when a gang of pirates attempted to hijack a US-flagged ship with an American crew. They failed but took the ship’s captain hostage.

The days-long stand off ended with the deadly sniping of three pirates by US Navy SEALS.

Dozens of international warships now patrol the waterways between the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean. Flying over the Gulf of Aden, cargo ships can be seen on the seas below steaming along in two-by-two
formation guarded by foreign navies against the pirates’ little wooden
skiffs.

While millions of dollars are thrown at the anti-piracy patrols,
Somaliland is doing its own thing — unsupported as usual. Berthed in
Berbera the Somaliland Coast Guard’s three little grey gunships patrol
500 miles of coastline. They’ve already caught three dozen pirates who
are now locked up in prisons in Berbera and Mandheera.

These successes are a source of pride in Somaliland – yet another
example of how different this self-declared republic is from Somalia,
a country that stands no chance whatever of patrolling its own waters.
But it also reveals the schizophrenia of Somaliland’s national pride
after 18-years of lonely struggle: fiercely independent yet desperate
for acceptance.

Everywhere people ask, part forlorn part indignant, why their country
is not recognized by the outside world and by the West (“We do
everything right. We even fight piracy!” declared the president in an
interview).

The unsatisfactory answer – the West is waiting for an African nation
to go first – is then followed with muttering about not needing the
outside world anyway, “We’ll do it ourselves, we don’t need anyone
else,” they say.

Source: Somaliland: The Pirate Hunting Coast Guard

Somaliland Offers Ports For Anti-Pirate Operations- Nairobi

The Somali sea-gangs have attacked dozens of ships in the Gulf of Aden this year.


The breakaway enclave of Somaliland offered on Thursday the use of ports along its long coastline for foreign naval patrols against Somali pirates.

The Somali sea-gangs have attacked dozens of ships in the Gulf of Aden this year, but generally prefer to strike in waters near Yemen instead of going close to Somaliland's shore.

"Our coast is extremely long but we have kept our waters free of pirates. We have not had one single incident," said Abdillahi Duale, foreign minister for Somaliland which broke away from Somalia to declare itself an independent republic in 1991.

"We will support the fight against pirates any way we can. Our ports are open for the coalition and all those who are fighting piracy to use as they wish," he told Reuters.

The European Union is to begin an air and naval operation off Somalia next week, while a Danish-led multilateral task force has eight ships, and the NATO alliance has a further four patrolling the waters off Somalia.

Duale said the coastguard of Somaliland -- a semi-desert terrain that is home to 3.5 million people and neighbours Djibouti and Ethiopia in the north-west of Somalia -- was doing a good job keeping pirates at bay.

He declined to say how many boats Somaliland had.

Neighbouring Puntland, which also runs its affairs relatively autonomously but has not sought independence from Somalia, is by contrast a major base for pirates.

Seventeen years of civil conflict in southern and central Somalia has fuelled piracy, which has spilled into Indian Ocean waters as well as the Gulf of Aden, shaking global shipping.

U.N. SECURITY ALERT

Since early 2007, Islamist insurgents have been fighting the Mogadishu-based government of Somalia and its Ethiopian military backers. The insurgents are within a few miles of the capital.

Duale said the militant Islamist group al Shabaab was behind an Oct. 29 wave of suicide blasts in Somaliland's capital Hargeisa that killed at least 25 people at a U.N. building, the Ethiopian embassy and a local government building.

"They want to cripple Somaliland's democratisation process," the minister said during a visit to Kenya.

The ex-British protectorate, roughly the size of England and Wales, has won plaudits for multi-party polls and institutions. No country, however, has recognised its independence.

Duale, and other ministers on a Somaliland delegation in Nairobi, said the United Nations' decision to put the region on a Phase Four alert after the bombs -- meaning all non-essential staff are evacuated -- was "outrageous" and unfair.

"That is just what the terrorists want," Duale said

Planning Minister Ali Ibrahim said Somaliland should be supported, rather than abandoned, in its fight against militants, which included foiling numerous bomb plots.

"It is very paradoxical. We all talk about the fight against terror, but when terror hits a poor country like Somaliland, everyone pulls back and retreats in the name of protecting their nationals," he said. "They are giving up to terrorists."

The U.N. security decision would hinder much-needed development projects in Somaliland, deter foreign aid groups and investors, and may even undermine a local presidential election set for March 2009, the ministers said.

"Voter registration is in full swing. If this Phase Four continues, we might have problems, for example in getting in all the foreign observers who were expected," Ibrahim said.

Somalianders abroad remain undeterred, however, the ministers said, still pouring money into construction of homes, hotels and factories.

"We are a de facto state," Foreign Minister Duale said. "We will stay the course. We know that one brave country will ... recognise our independence. History will put the Somaliland state where it belongs."

Source: Reuters

Somaliland: Africa's best-kept secret

The Independent

As Somalia gains infamy as a haven for pirates, its smaller peaceful neighbour is pleading for international recognition.

By Daniel Howden in Somaliland

Wednesday, 6 May 2009

The arrivals hall of Hargeisa airport is a dust-blown, concrete box on a sweltering plain of scrub desert. Through its broken tinted doors are peeling walls with a few scattered pictures of Mecca. A brass plaque on a beam above them commemorates the opening of the building by Prince Henry, the 1st Duke of Gloucester, in 1958. The tarnished plate looks oddly out of place as a reminder of Britain's forgotten colony.

Locals take no notice of a sunken ship which lies off the coast of Somaliland
ANDRE LASCARIS
- Locals take no notice of a sunken ship which lies off the coast of Somaliland


While the rest of Somalia has forced its way on to the world's news agenda as an anarchic, failed state and the spawning ground for a new age of piracy, the former British protectorate of Somaliland has been quietly pleading for international recognition.

To its south lies the region of Puntland, whose ports have been turned over to the pirate gangs. Beyond that, in Mogadishu, are the remnants of an Italian colony that is now among the most dangerous places on earth. To the west is the repressive and heavily armed Ethiopia. It is what Somaliland's Foreign Minister ruefully calls a "rough neighbourhood".

Sitting beneath a map of his unrecognised state – which is roughly the size of Wales and England combined – Abdillahi Duale cuts a polite, if exasperated, figure. He begins to list Somaliland's accomplishments, such as a functioning government, multi-party elections, a coastguard and a police force: quite mundane in most places in the world but in this neighbourhood, truly remarkable. It is, the minister says, "Africa's best kept secret".

Somaliland has more territory and a bigger population than at least a dozen other African states, he points out. Recognition will not "open Pandora's box in Africa", he says. Neither will it set a precedent – that has been done already in East Timor and Kosovo. "The international community is focused on Somalia, okay. We are saying, 'Keep doing what you're doing in Mogadishu, but for goodness sake help those who help themselves'."

A polished performer, Mr Duale explains the Somalis' divergent paths with a brief history lesson. When both British and Italian Somaliland were granted independence within months of each other in 1960, there was a mistaken unity pact that eventually degenerated into the violent dictatorship of Siad Barre and then into civil war. When Barre's government fell in 1991, the north set up its own government within the former colonial borders while the south descended into warlordism.

Both paths had their origins in the colonial experience, the minister argues. Britain only wanted its protectorate to shore up naval control of the Gulf of Aden and to supply meat to Aden itself, and so left traditional elders largely in place. Italy treated its eastern coastal section of Somalia as a settlers' colony and dismantled equivalent authorities to achieve this. When the shooting briefly stopped in 1991, the north had a starting point, the south didn't.

Despite this, Somaliland's 3.8 million people remain subject to a government in Mogadishu that doesn't exist. It has its own currency, security services, ministries and courts but no place at the United Nations. Without recognition Hargeisa has no access to lenders such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank and receives no direct budgetary support. The international donors who met in Brussels last month to pledge €230m in aid for Somalia did not mention Somaliland.

Presiding over this limbo is Dahir Rayale Kahin. "All the criteria are fulfilled but still no one is recognising us," the President says calmly. "We are fighting piracy, we are arresting terrorists. Nobody can deny our regional contribution."

Three groups of pirates have been detained by Somaliland's threadbare coastguard and its jails hold dozens of suspected members of Islamist militias, such as al-Shabaab, who control much of southern Somalia.

A referendum held in 2001 found overwhelming support for an independent Somaliland and an African Union report on recognition for the territory in 2005 found in favour, Mr Rayale points out. "Always they say, 'If someone else recognises you, we will be second'. The problem is who will be first?"

Like many in Somaliland, he hopes the answer could be Britain. The UK recognised Somaliland at independence in 1960 but London would have to upset powerful allies to renew that step. In private, people here know that Egypt remains the major hurdle. Cairo sees a powerful Somalia as a bulwark against Ethiopia in any future conflict over the vital resources of the Nile, and still nurtures those who dream of a greater Somalia. Such a project would unite Somalis in Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti, with those in the former British and Italian colonies under the five stars of the Somali flag. President Rayale says that dream "cannot happen" and offers an analogy from across the Gulf of Aden where the Arabs are divided into many countries despite sharing a religion and language. "The Arabs are Arabs and yet they are more than 20 countries. We can be like Arabs," he says.

This month was supposed to have seen the latest act of would-be statehood with the holding of elections, They have now been delayed until September. The government blames the hold-up on the electoral register; the opposition says it is "running away" from a vote it will lose.

The President is obviously comfortable in the office he insists he will vacate if he loses in the ballot. A weighty globe swings on a golden axis on his desk, while the letters "VIP" are stitched into the burgundy silk curtains.

However, Somaliland has its own "unique" set of checks and balances, as Mohamed Rashid Shaik Hassan, a former BBC journalist-turned-opposition politician, explains. The deputy leader of the OCID party says that serious power remains with a council of elders who operate as a second house. It was their intervention last week that saw a definite date of 27 September set for the poll.

Mr Hassan's deeper concerns echo those of opposition and government alike. With little or no formal economy, joblessness is nearly total and time could be running out on Somaliland's democratic experiment, he says, adding: "The British civil service generation is nearly gone and there is nothing to replace it. If democracy doesn't win recognition, people will look elsewhere." Abdurahman Farar, another opposition leader, is appalled that his "de facto country" is ignored while millions of dollars are poured into the power vacuum in Mogadishu. "The UN still wants to put Humpty Dumpty together again," he says dismissively.

The potential costs of a continued limbo were hammered home in deadly fashion last October when a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks left 28 people dead and rocked the comparative stability of Hargeisa. Said Adani played an unwitting role in thwarting one of the attacks. The presidential press secretary's car was parked near the gate when a truck bomber smashed it open as he tried to ram the office building. The small car stopped the truck just short of its target. Mr Adani was lucky enough to be inside the compound, but Abokar Subub, a police commander, was not as fortunate. He lifts his shirt with a wheeze from a smashed rib to reveal a lattice of shrapnel scars. The blast killed 18 people and the same scars mark its trees, tiles and broken walls. Mr Adani says the attack was a "wake-up call" to anyone who takes security for granted in the last stable corner of Somalia.

Mr Duale, the Foreign Minister, hopes "the international community will call a spade a spade and recognise Somaliland". His country is a "prime piece of real estate" which was once used to police the Gulf of Aden – a job which this year's surge in piracy has shown is more critical than ever. "We are not a bunch of wackos running around," he pleads. "We are people you can work with."

While no one wants to put a time limit on how long Somaliland can hold out in isolation, there are worrying signs everywhere.

A few feet away from the Duke of Gloucester's airport plaque is a meagre kiosk offering a range of sugary biscuits. The bored-looking young man who works the day shift there has a favourite T-shirt – it is emblazoned, in big garish letters with the name of Hassan Nasrullah, the Hizbollah leader in Lebanon.

Somaliland: By numbers

3.5 million Estimated population of Somaliland, of a total 9.1 million in Somalia

1991 Year independence was declared

73 Crime-related deaths in Somaliland last year, compared with 7, 574 in the rest of Somalia, according to the Somaliland police


Source: The Independent: Somaliland: Africa's best-kept secret - Africa
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/somaliland-africas-bestkept-secret-1679731.html

Welcome to Somaliland Blog for Peace and Security

Somaliland has faced many challenges in the last two decades and the greatest threat is that of terrorism and insecurity in the Horn of Africa. The threat of terrorism and piracy in the Horn has become one of the greatest challenges that the International Community has to face globally in the 21st century. Somaliland is protecting the security of its borders against terrorism and protects their waters from piracy with minimum assistance from the International Community. The issues of terrorism and piracy have become major security issues for today's global world.

Somaliland with the support of Triton International is working to find immediate solutions for its piracy threats in the Horn. Equally Somaliland is working with the International Community to combat terrorism in the Horn. Somaliland though not recognised is playing a major role in protecting the Horn from further security threats. Somaliland's lack of recognition will only threaten and create more security challenges for the red sea and a major route connected to all trades. Somaliland has proven to be a positive partner in a region that is known for piracy and terrorism and has shown a good record towards this though Somaliland is working with minimum assistance from the International Community. Somaliland relies on the good will of their small community of International Friends who has stood up by Somaliland's quest for recognition, development aswell as allowing their voice to be heard in the International platform.

Somaliland definitely needs international help to be able to form policies and an environment that will help tackle 21st century global threats. The fact that Somaliland emerged from post conflict situation is a good example and can help others learn from its lessons.