Dogmatic application of well intended human rights laws rewards pirates with comfortable asylum in Europe.
European jails look like a luxury resort to arrested Somali Pirates. After their jail term they can not be sent back against their will, instead pirates want to request asylum and then bring their families over. Exactly the kind of immigrants a country needs!
Human Rights, when overdone as a inflexible dogma, encourage crime.
Somali pirates embrace capture as route to Europe
Pirates captured after attacking a Dutch vessel have gone on trial in the liberal Netherlands and at least two of them have declared their intention to stay on as residents.
Geert-Jan Knoops, an international criminal law attorney and professor at the Royal University of Utrecht, has suggested that the Dutch trial might encourage pirates to surrender just in order to seek a better life in Western countries. [ . . . ]
“Life is good here,” said one of the defendants, named Sayid, about his experience in a Dutch jail.
[ . . . ]
“My client feels safe here. His own village is dominated by poverty and sharia [Islamic law] but here he has good food and can play football and watch television. He thinks the lavatory in his cell is fantastic,” he said.
Mr Ausma has told the Somali that he will be considered for a residence permit after serving his sentence, expected to be a maximum of four years in prison.
“He intends to send for his wife and children as soon as he is released from prison. He knows he cannot easily be sent back to Somalia. He loves it here in the Netherlands,” Mr Ausma told the NRC Handelsblad newspaper.
More welcome mats for pirates in Britain and Holland
