Posted on 04/10/2009 4:45:16 PM PDT by BarnacleCenturion
Pirates on Friday sailed a hijacked German freighter and its crew toward a lifeboat off Somalia where an American hostage is being held.
They are reportedly doing so an attempt to help their comrades in a standoff with the US Navy.
Four pirates are holding the American captain of a cargo ship, Richard Phillips, in a drifting lifeboat and demanding $US2 million for his release and a guarantee of their own safety.
They have been holding him since a foiled attempt on Wednesday to hijack the 17,000-tonne, Danish-owned Maersk Alabama in the Indian Ocean.
A destroyer, the USS Bainbridge, is close by.
Another group that hijacked a 20,000-tonne German container vessel, the Hansa Stavanger, a week ago is reportedly heading to the scene of the standoff.
What ever happened to the letter of Marque’ and reprisal?
http://www.answers.com/topic/letter-of-marque
That way a country bids the anti piracy job out to the private sector. That’s why they called them “Privateers”.
As I understand it, it was kind of hard to tell the Privateers from the Pirates at times, and some of them sort of switched allegiances from time to time - but apparently it made a dent in the piracy industry for a while back in the 18th Century.
Why not bring it back? Although the Declaration of Paris did away with the letter of marque’ for Europe in 1856, America was not a signatory to that declaration, and apparently it remains a legal, Constitutional option. Ron Paul tried to apply it to terrorists after 9/11/01. I see no reason why we couldn’t rummage it back out of the dusty old sea chest of history and use it to clean up the Somali “Pirate” terrorists. It would help to improve security without tying up our Naval forces.
Someone up there said, its not filled with air, so popping it won’t work. Overturning it would work. So would sniper bullets.
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