Ten Somali suspects to be convicted in Kenya over piracy

Ten Somali suspects captured early this year by the United States navy off the coast of Somalia have been found guilty of piracy and hijacking by a court in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.

The convicted men, who will be sentenced next week, were arrested earlier this year off the Somali coast, court officials said on Thursday. The ten suspects had challenged the jurisdiction of a Kenyan court which had charged them with piracy.

They had maintained they were fisherman and had not held 16 crew members of an Indian ship for ransom.

When the case opened in February, the suspects' lawyer Mohammed Khatib told the court that it had got no jurisdiction to hear the matter", arguing that since the suspects were captured by U.S. sailors in Somali waters aboard an Indian dhow, Kenya had no authority to try the men.

Khatib said the proper venue for the trial - the first test of Kenya 's piracy law - would be Somalia itself or India , where the ship they allegedly commandeered was registered.

U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet captured the men on January 21, about 85 km off Somalia's central eastern coast.

They were aboard an Indian dhow whose 16-member crew told U.S. sailors that the gunmen had hijacked them and were using their boat as a "mother ship" to launch attacks on other vessels.

The event came amid a surge in hijackings off the coast of Somalia where the International Maritime Bureau had reported about 40 attacks on ships since mid-March of last year.

Source: Xinhua