MOSCOW – Two days after Russian marines captured 10 Somali pirates in a much-ballyhooed high-seas shootout, freeing Russian crew members who had huddled for 20 hours in the dank safety of the engine room, Russia’s Defense Ministry on Friday announced an anticlimactic ending to the saga.
They put the pirates back on their boat and set them free.
“It is much easier to catch pirates than to decide what to do with them,†said Gen. Nikolai Y. Makarov, the chief of Russia’s general staff, in comments carried by the Interfax news service. What ensues, he said, is a series of headaches: Russian law provides no basis for detaining them, and when Russian forces release them to their home countries, they are frequently accused of human rights violations. “It is extremely difficult to handle such issues from a legal standpoint,†he said...