France, the red lantern of the judgments of Somali pirates
(BRUSSELS2) Arrested en April 2008 (for the Ponant), in September 2008 (for the Carré d'As) or in April 2009 (for the Tanit), the fifteen Somali pirates repatriated to France have still not been judged. The first trial - for the Carré d'As - is scheduled for November before the Paris Assize Court. A second - for the Ponant - is only planned for... May-June 2012... Of three at four years after the arrest, in pre-trial detention, it's starting to get long!
A reasonable deadline
We are beginning to enter a limit zone, which is close to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), requiring a judgment within a "reasonable time". Admittedly, no specific deadline is set by the European judges. The ECHR generally takes into account three criteria: the stakes of the dispute (important or not), the complexity of the case, and respect for the rights of the defence. It thus takes into account the behavior of the accused as well as that of the judicial authorities. But it is particularly vigilant in criminal cases, especially when the defendant is placed in pre-trial detention. Pretrial detention without trial for a long period, and without significant justification, can lead to a certain illegality. If there is an undeniable complexity in piracy cases, due to the particular international circumstances and the collection of evidence, it is however difficult to explain why all the other countries, where pirates have been brought, have succeeded in judging "their " Pirates within a shorter period: sometimes less than a year, often between 1 and a half and 2 years.
France behind in justice
Of all the pirates transferred to another country to be tried there, France is indeed the one that drags out its trials for piracy the longest. And we cannot impute this delay to the procedural tradition since the countries concerned include countries with both Anglo-Saxon and Latin traditions, with adversarial and inquisitorial procedures. The five pirates arrested for an attack in January 2009 on the Samanyulo were thus sentenced in the Netherlands to 5 years in prison in June 2010 (ie 18 months after the arrest). The 8 pirates responsible for the attack on the MV Powerful in November 2008 were sentenced to 20 years in prison in March 2010 in Kenya (15 months). The pirate arrested for the attack on Mv Maersk Alabama in April 2009 was sentenced in the United States to 34 years in prison in February 2011 (22 months). The two Alakrana pirates arrested in October 2009 were sentenced in Spain in May 2011 (19 months). The pirate arrested in November 2010 for the attack on Petra and Pompei was tried in Belgium in June 2011 in a record time (i.e. 8 months).
