Pirates: The Russian Solution

May 7, 2010: Harking back to the days of the KGB, the Russian government may have found a way to deal with Somalia pirates who are taken captive, rather than get bogged down like other countries.

There are two examples to consider.

On April 9, 2009 pirates captured the Maersk Alabama. Days later Navy Seals killed three of the four pirates and the fourth was returned to the United States for prosecution.

Today, Abduwali Muse, the remaining Somallian pirate in being housed, fed and defended by American taxpayers.

What to do with pirates likes Muse pose a problem for many countries due to wariness of having to pay for their prosecution and then be left with them after they serve their prison terms.

Muse's case also illustrates some of the difficulties of bringing cases from Somalia, which has not had an effective national government for nearly three decades.

The second example happened this week:

On Wednesday, eleven pirates boarded the Russian oil tanker Moscow University. The 23 crew men, took refuge in a safe room and were not hurt.

On Thursday, Russian special forces stormed the tanker, killed one pirate and arrested ten others. Initially, Russian authorities said they were going to ship the pirates back to Moscow to face piracy charges, but then the story changed abruptly.

Citing an "imperfection" in international law (which he couldn't state) Russian Defense officials said today that the pirates were released. They were released back into the small boats they approached the tanker on, with no GPS and without their weapons.

Yeah...right.

According to the AP, Defense Ministry Spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said the pirates had been released and then when questioned why stated, "Why should we feed some pirates?"

Oh they fed those pirates alright...to the sharks in the Gulf of Aden.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, taxpayers are feeding Mr. Muse, his court appointed lawyer, the courts, the prosecution and the federal government.