Courier (ship)
The Concord (sister ship of the Courier )
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Courier was a container ship of the type Warnow CS 1400 . The ship was owned by a ship management company belonging to the shipping company Gebr. Winter from Hamburg . The ship was built between 1994 and 1995 under construction number 430 at what was then the Kvaerner Warnow shipyard in Warnemünde . The keel was laid on May 18, the launch on September 23, 1994. The ship was completed and handed over to the owner in February 1995. In early 2013, the ship was scrapped in Mumbai.
Pirate attack and law enforcement
The Courier loaded with steel products was on its way to Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates when the Filipino captain of the ship made an emergency call on March 3, 2009 at 7:12 a.m. CET . He reported that pirates attacked the freighter with bazookas and automatic weapons. There were 18 mostly Filipino crew members on board the ship.
An on- board helicopter of the type Sea Lynx from the frigate Rhineland-Palatinate , about 50 nm away , which crossed Operation Atalanta in the Gulf of Aden as part of the anti-pirate mission , and a helicopter of the US Navy from the cruiser Monterey stationed nearby thwarted the Attack. At around 10 a.m., soldiers from the German frigate boarded the open boat and arrested nine people.
The Rhineland-Palatinate brought the nine arrested persons to Mombasa and handed them over to the Kenyan authorities on April 10, 2009 for further prosecution . The Hamburg public prosecutor's office had refrained from criminal prosecution in Germany after the EU and Kenya signed an agreement on the surrender of pirates arrested in the Horn of Africa on March 6, 2009 in the Kenyan capital Nairobi .
The crew of the Rhineland-Palatinate had the found weapons, including one at the boarding of the Somali boat bazooka , three assault rifles AK-47 , a Tokarev - gun , a carbine and an automatic rifle thrown for safety on board. The Kenyan judiciary criticized the fact that the German soldiers had destroyed important evidence by sinking the tools in the sea, which would be necessary to prove piracy, and considers the testimony of the captain of the attacked freighter Courier to be indispensable in court.
Two Somalis arrested for the attack on the Courier container ship in Kenya are suing the federal government for damages. One of the alleged pirates had an official liability suit brought against the Ministry of the Interior , Justice and Defense, as well as the Foreign Office , through his German lawyers at the Berlin Regional Court . The transfer to Kenya is unlawful because the detention in Shimo La Tewa prison in Mombasa is inhumane, European minimum standards are not met, and the detainees are not pirates at all. The Somali captain wanted to conduct a legal arms deal in Yemen , the others were passengers who paid for the crossing.
Another defendant had his lawyer make an urgent application to the Berlin Administrative Court in which he demanded that the federal government cover the costs of the German defense lawyer and provide consular support. The trial began in Mombasa on April 22, 2009.
On April 28, 2009, Willie Sulong, the captain of the Courier , testified in a court in Mombasa. Captain Sulong described men shooting at the Courier from a boat . He couldn't identify her. However, GPS position data from a navigation device found on the suspect's skiff show that they were at the scene at the time of the crime.
A judge at the Supreme Court in Mombasa on November 9, 2010 ordered the immediate release of the nine suspected Somali pirates and their return to their country of origin. The court based this decision on the fact that, according to its laws, Kenya cannot exercise jurisdiction over crimes committed outside its territorial waters.
technical description
The Courier was powered by a seven-cylinder two - stroke diesel engine with an output of 11,130 kW, which acts on a fixed propeller . In addition, the ship was equipped with a bow thruster .
The ship was able to load a total of 1,452 TEU , of which 534 TEU were below deck and 918 TEU on deck. There were also connections for a total of 150 refrigerated containers. The three cranes on board, each of which could lift 45 tons, enabled the ship to handle cargo regardless of the existing port infrastructure.
Individual evidence
- ↑ List of all ships dismantled over the world in 2013 ( Memento from January 29, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) , NGO Shipbreaking Platform (PDF; 2.8 MB).
- ↑ Bulletin of information and analysis on ship demolition # 31 , May 17, 2013, Robin des Bois (PDF; 6.9 MB).
- ↑ In See / Berlin. Atalanta: Frigate Rhineland-Palatinate thwarted pirate attack. In: Bundeswehr.de , March 4, 2009, accessed on March 10, 2009.
- ^ Law Enforcement in Kenya. Pirates transferred. In: n-tv , March 10, 2009, accessed on February 18, 2018.
- ↑ Exchange of letters between the European Union and the Kenyan government on the conditions and modalities for the surrender of persons suspected of piracy and detained by the EU-led naval forces (EUNAVFOR) and of goods confiscated in the possession of EUNAVFO by EUNAVFOR to Kenya and for their treatment after such a handover . In: EUR-Lex . Retrieved April 15, 2009.
- ↑ Christian Teevs: fight against Pirates: Kenya's judiciary criticized Bundeswehr. In: Spiegel-Online , March 28, 2009, accessed April 20, 2009.
- ↑ Sebastian Gehrmann: https://www.fr.de/politik/haftbedingungen-unmenschlich-11498553.html In: Frankfurter Rundschau , April 15, 2009, accessed on February 18, 2018.
- ^ Matthias Gebauer: pirate lawyers sue the federal government , Spiegel-Online, April 14, 2009, accessed on February 18, 2018.
- ↑ Judith Raupp: Captain in fear. ( Memento from June 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 29, 2009, accessed on September 8, 2009.
- ↑ Kassim Mohamed: Somali pirates “not guilty” in Kenya ( Memento from November 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), Radio Netherlands Worldwide, November 12, 2010.
- ^ In Re Mohamud Mohamed Dashi & 8 Others (2010) eKLR judgment of the High Court at Mombasa, National Council for Law Reporting - Kenya, accessed on March 16, 2011 (English).