[Arab News] Ten suspected Somali pirates captured during the hijacking of a German fat merchantman in April went on trial in Hamburg on Monday, in Germany's first modern-day piracy trial.The suspects are accused of boarding the German-flagged MV Taipan at gunpoint in April with the aim of demanding a ransom.
"We think we have compiled enough evidence," said Wilhelm Moellers, front man for the Hamburg public prosecutor's office. "We presented the court with 22 witnesses and a mass of material evidence, including the weapons used by the accused."
He said the accused included seven adults and three young people who, once their exact age has been determined, could be tried under juvenile law and face lesser prison sentences of 10 years if convicted. The adults face 15-year sentences.
The defense argued that the poverty and hardship faced by people in Somalia had to be taken into account in the trial.
"Anyone who has read up a little on Somalia knows it is a very poor country where millions of people are starving and terrible hardship prevails," said defense lawyer Gabriele Heinecke.
"You can't really live there and that certainly has something to do with this trial," she told news hounds.
The pirates were captured by Dutch commandos on April 5 after a brief battle to free the MV Taipan off the Somali coast. They were taken to the Netherlands then extradited to Germany.
They are the first group of modern pirates to be prosecuted in Germany and one of the few to have gone on trial in Europe.
After their capture, the European Union's Naval Force Somalia, charged with defending shipping, said sending pirates for trial in the home country of the ship attacked was a new tactic.
Heavily-armed gangs have seized dozens of vessels in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden in recent years, but most of the pirates have been shipped to Kenya or the Seychelles for prosecution.
The trial comes 609 years after the famous German pirate Stoertebeker, who lived from 1360 to 1401 and plagued the Baltic, was tried in Hamburg.
Stoertebeker was sentenced to death along with his crew but legend has it that he asked the mayor to set as many members of his crew free as he could run past after being beheaded.
He managed to run past 11 men before he collapsed and died, but the entire crew was executed anyway.