Hamburg/Berlin - A court in Hamburg late Friday issued arrest warrants for the nine pirates captured earlier this week by the German Navy off the coast of Somalia. The state's attorney requested the arrests based on charges of an attack on traffic on the high seas, justice spokesman Wilhelm Moellers told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The German government had been seeking the transfer of the suspects to Kenya, a move that was sealed Friday morning in an agreement with the European Union.
The German Defence Ministry said the frigate "Rheinland-Pfalz," where the pirates have been held since Tuesday, had already set course for the Kenyan port city of Mombasa. The frigate apprehended them when the pirates attacked a German merchant vessel off Somalia with anti-tank missiles and firearms.
The frigate forms part of the EU's anti-pirate mission Atalanta, operating in the Gulf of Aden.
The arrest warrants do not strictly require that a criminal prosecution would be carried out in Germany, Moellers emphasized. The state's attorney must first check out the details of the Kenya-EU agreement.
But prosecution officials believed there was enough basis for prosecuting the pirates in Germany, according to a ZDF broadcast report that cited military sources.
Source: dpa
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