407 Fernando Ibáñez Gómez Maritime Insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea:... were fifteen other people, whose weapons and vehicles were decommissioned.6 Shortly afterwards, it was learnt that he had been released. Scarcely two years earlier, the Somali President had granted a diplomatic passport (with its corresponding immunity) to Mohamed Abdi Hassan, better known as Afweyne (“big mouth”). According to the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, Afweyne presented it at the Malaysian border in April 2012, as requested by the authorities there. Indicative of this drastic change in the situation of the piracy business was the announcement by Afweyne in January 2013, that he was retiring from the activity. As he himself said, his focus would be on rehabilitating former pirates. However, that was to prove of little use to him. His participation in the hijacking of the Pompei, a Belgian-owned dredger provided the Belgian authorities with an opportunity to lay a trap for him. They pretended they were making a film on his life and, no sooner had he placed foot on Belgian soil at Brussels airport, he was arrested. Vanity got the better of him in the end and he was condemned to 20 years imprisonment.7 Another bloody case was that of Abshir Boyah, who was involved in piracy for years from his pirate base in Puntland. In spite of being captured by the Somali authorities, he was only condemned to five years imprisonment, a benevolent sentence to say the least. On the other hand, possible oil exploration contracts may have influenced the move by some Somali authorities towards a greater crackdown against the pirates. Particularly, in the case of Puntland where, at the beginning of 2012, the first exploratory drillings were successfully carried out.8 The authorities in the region also appear to have worked with the elderly and the clan leaders, given that the pirates had eroded the traditional authority of both groups thanks to corruption.9 6 “Number two Somali pirate leader arrested in Mogadishu”, 18 August 2014: http://www. somalicurrent.com/2014/08/18/number-two-somali-pirate-leader-arrested-in-mogadishu/ Consulted: 18/08/2014. 7 “The Rise and Fall of Somalia’s Pirate King”, Foreign Policy, 4 November 2013: http://www. foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/04/the_rise_and_fall_of_somalia_s_pirate_king Consulted: 18/08/2014. 8 “Crude Findings: the Forgotten Factor in the Fall and Fall of Somali Piracy”, Think Africa Press, 18 November 2013: http://thinkafricapress.com/somalia/piracy-oil-decrease-puntland Consulted: 20/08/2014. 9 WELDEMICHAEL, A.T. (2014). Dalhouse Marine Piracy Project. When Elephants Fight, the Grass Suffers: A report on the Local Consequences of Piracy in Puntland. (Marine Affairs Program Technical Report 12): http://www.dal.ca/faculty/science/marine-affairs-program/research/research-news/ map-technical-series-reports.html Consulted: 19/08/2014.
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