Piracy Court
Kenya opens special piracy court in Mombasa
A special court to try suspected pirates has opened in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, funded by international donors.
Pirates based in neighbouring Somalia have made the Gulf of Aden one of the world's most dangerous shipping lanes.
Warships from several world powers now patrol the Indian Ocean but there has been confusion about where those arrested should face justice.
Some 100 suspects are in Kenya and 18 pirates have already been convicted.
Earlier this year, Kenya said it would stop prosecuting piracy cases unless other countries agreed to share the "burden".
Several suspected pirates detained by naval patrols on the high seas were released because of a lack of clarity about where and how to prosecute them.
Strategy pays off
The new court in the Shimo la Tewa prison in Mombasa is being funded by several donors, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the European Union, Australia and Canada.
It opened a month after the EU's top diplomat, Catherine Ashton, went on a tour of East Africa to help drum up support for tackling the pirates.
The BBC's Josphat Makori in Kenya says the court is a significant step forward in the fight against piracy although, officially, it will also be used for other serious cases.
He also says that Kenya's strategy of threatening to stop putting pirate suspects on trial has paid off.
Any convicted pirates will also serve their sentences at the prison, joining those already found guilty.
Lawyers for pirate suspects have argued, unsuccessfully, that Kenya does not have the jurisdiction to try their clients.
In the first case of its kind to come to trial in Europe a Dutch court last week sentenced five Somali men to five years in prison for attacking a Dutch Antilles-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden in 2009,
Other Somali piracy suspects are being held in France, Spain, Germany and the US.
There has been a surge in pirate attacks in recent months after a relative lull, with some ships seized closer to India than Somalia.
(Published by BBC - June 24, 2010)