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"When a ship is part of NATO, the detention of a person is a matter for the national authorities," Fernandes said from a warship in the Gulf of Aden. The consistent failure to punish or at least detain pirates could help convince them that they have little to lose from attempting fresh attacks, an analyst said. "It's quite encouraging for them," said Peter Lehr, the author of "Violence at Sea: Piracy in the Age of Global Terrorism" and a lecturer in terrorism studies at Scotland's University of St. Andrews. "The threat to your life is quite low and the chance you get arrested and sent to a not-so-nice Kenyan prison is quite low as well." Dozens of suspected pirates are in a crowded prison in the Kenyan port of Mombasa after the United States and the European Union agreed to bring suspects there. But many more have been released amid fears of further clogging up Kenya's judicial system. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, speaking at a news conference in Trinidad, said: "We did briefly detain pirates and disarm them, and I think those were the appropriate measures under the circumstances." Also Sunday, the Somali government called for the death penalty for pirates "Becoming a pirate is a crime, and Islam says if you become a pirate you should definitely be killed because you are killing the people," said Somalia's deputy prime minister, Abdurrahman Haji Adam. But the announcement is unlikely to have much effect. The government barely controls a few pockets of territory in Mogadishu, the capital, and is battling an Islamist insurgency. It has made no efforts so far to curb the heavily armed pirate gangs who flaunt their wealth in Somalia's coastal cities.
[Associated
Press;
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