Court orders France to pay damages to Somali pirates

The European Court of Human Rights has said that France has violated the rights of Somali pirates who had attacked French ship and has ordered compensation for them over judicial delays. They claim that the nine Somali pirates should get thousands of euros in compensation due to the fact that they were not immediately brought before a French judge.

Judges fault France for keeping the pirates in custody for an extra 48 hours. They had held French citizens hostage after seizing a French-flagged cruise ship and a French yacht in 2008. Eventually, the French military captured these pirates on the Somali coast after the hostages had been released for ransoms of $2.1m and $2m. 

Typically, Indian Ocean shipping had been tormented by pirate gangs but recently international naval action in the region has reduced attacks, effectively boosting sales for all involved parties. Officials may have been neglecting the rights of the pirates as a whole simply to improve their own nation's economy.

The extra 48 hours the pirates spent in custody on French land violated their rights to liberty and security according to the court's ruling. Regardless if these individuals are pirates, they deserve the decency of only being held as long as they possibly need to be. This fact stands especially in the European Union as they violated the European Convention on Human Rights and thus they actually had a precedent for the situation. Even if the increased trade revenue thing is my personal speculation, it may actually be linked to a motive for increased militirization in the Indian Ocean region.