Sitting in a classroom inside the central prison in Yemen’s southern port of Aden, Mohammed Mahmud Noor pulls nervously on a cigarette. He insists that he is a simple fisherman, not a pirate.
The 26-year-old from Bosasso in northern Somalia’s breakaway Puntland region was detained in December in the Gulf of Aden by an Indian warship of the international force battling the plague of piracy in the region.
A total of 22 suspected Somali pirates are awaiting trial in the jail built by the British in 1965, two years before their departure from Aden and south Yemen.
PHOTO: AFP
Tall and slim, sporting a carefully trimmed beard and thin mustache, Noor is dressed in a bright blue prison uniform.
He says he has a wife and child back home. And he also says he has no idea why he and 11 others were arrested and handed over to the Yemeni authorities.
“There were 22 of us, 12 Somalis and 10 from Yemen. We were fishing when the Indians arrested us,” he said through another prisoner who acts as interpreter as several prison guards look on.
Noor admitted that aboard their boat were Kalashnikov assault rifles, maybe not a fisherman’s first choice as a tool of the trade.
But he insists the weapons “were for our own security to defend ourselves against pirates wanting to steal our catch.”
And anyway, he adds: “All Somalis have guns.”
The 10 Yemenis found in the boat with them by the Indian navy were quickly released. The Somalis are accused of taking the Yemenis hostage to use as human shields in acts of piracy.
Since the beginning of the year pirates operating in the Gulf of Aden and off Somalia are reported to have used the ploy in a bid to convince warships tracking their skiffs that they are normal fishing vessels.
Asked about this, Noor denies the charge and says the Somalis had a proper contract with the Yemenis to fish.
“Our country is at war and we’re in prison. We have no rights,” he said.
Hardline insurgents launched an unprecedented offensive against Somalia’s transitional federal government on May 7. More than 250 people, including many civilians, have been killed and close to 100,000 people displaced.
Sitting beside him, Abdul Qader Ali Hussein, 25, listens to Noor in silence.
This prisoner, also from Bosasso and also suspected of being a pirate, says he too is married, and that he has two children.
Hussein is from another group of Somalis, a 10-strong party picked up in the Gulf of Aden in February by a Russian warship.
As with all self-respecting Somali “fishermen,” they too had a stash of AK-47s on board their boat.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Hussein says. “The judge will take this into account.”
According to the state news agency Saba, at least four Yemeni fishermen have been killed this year when they have come under fire from international warships in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.
Ecoterra International, an environmentalist group monitoring illegal marine activities in the region, said Somali pirates had launched 126 attacks so far this year, including 44 successful sea-jackings.
Last year, they captured 49 ships.
Analysts say piracy can only be eradicated with measures to end the chaos inside Somalia, where close to two decades of war and lawlessness have made piracy one of the few viable sources of income.
Both Noor and Hussein say they have faced interrogation only once since their arrest, and that they find the days long and boring.
The prison governor, Colonel Saif Ahmad Nagi, said he does not know when the 22 detained Somalis aged between 20 and 40 will appear before a judge.
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