Should We Make Somali Pirates Walk the Gangplank?

 Western nations must figure out how to deal with them. By Anne Applebaum 

Lost at sea

The pirates attacked the merchant ship early on the morning of May 5. The crew members locked themselves in the engine room with a stock of food and water. A naval destroyer came steaming to the rescue and demanded that the pirates give up the ship. When they refused, the destroyer attacked with guns and cannons, and, after a brief firefight, the pirates surrendered

Had this been a story from a children's book—the kind with a skull and crossbones on the cover and a foldout treasure map inside—the pirates would then have walked the plank. But it wasn't a story from a children's book. This was May 5, 2010. The merchant ship was not a schooner but a Russian tanker, carrying 86,000 tons of crude oil worth $52 million. The pirates were not colorful figures with cutlasses but Somalis led by professionals who knew what this cargo was worth.
As for the Russian destroyer, it was not operating according to an 18^th-century code of honor but according to international law, such as it is. Theoretically, the captain was supposed to hand the detainees and the evidence over to regional police. Not wanting to involve himself in legal wrangling, however, he decided to "release" the pirates instead. And thus they were "set free" in a tiny inflatable raft, with no navigation equipment, 350 miles off the coast of Yemen. The raft has since disappeared. In the 21^st century, this is how pirates walk the plank.