HAMBURG: A German court yesterday sentenced 10 Somalis to between two and seven years in prison for hijacking a German-flagged ship off the Horn of Africa in Germany’s first piracy trial in four centuries.
“The defendants are guilty of the attack on sea transport in conjunction with extortionary kidnapping,” the judge at the court in the northern port city of Hamburg, Bernd Steinmetz, said.
The defendants, believed aged between 19 and 50, went on trial in November 2010 but the case has been marred by complications, not least confusion over the Somalis’ full names and exact ages.
They were arrested by the Dutch navy some three and a half hours after they took over the German container ship Taipan some 950km off the Somali coast in April 2010. The Taipan’s 15-member crew managed to evade capture by the pirates by taking refuge in a so-called “panic room” hidden within the ship.
Attacks, clashes in Nigeria kill
several people
KANO: Explosions and gun battles between suspected Islamist extremists and security forces hit northeastern Nigeria, leaving several people dead and buildings destroyed in one city, officials and residents said yesterday.
The clashes sparked panic and chaos in the city of Potiskum from late Thursday, with residents reporting a number of dead as well as schools and a government building set on fire. In Maiduguri, gunfire and several explosions could also be heard yesterday, but details were not immediately clear.
Agencies
