Federal Government of Somalia sentenced today 10 Indian sailors and their captain as well as a Somali businesswoman to one year imprisonment and a fine of US$20,000 for illegally exporting charcoal from Somalia to the United Arab Emirates.
The ten Indians were returned to the prison, while the Somali businesswoman was sentenced in absentia. The ruling is seen as a very lenient one and environmental organizations are asking for much more severe punishments.
Somali business people had allegedly chartered the vessel, the MSV MUSKAN, to carry the charcoal from the ports of Barawe and Kismayo. Both ports are controlled by Islamist insurgents trying to overthrow the weak UN-backed government, who had declared that only Mogadishu is an official port of entry for foreign vessels coming to Somalia's Indian Ocean coast. Other legal ports are Berbera and Bosaso on the Gulf of Aden.
Indian vessels like this had been banned already since March 2010 by the Government of India from sailing at all to Somalia. But the owners of ships regularly circumvent this by clandestinely letting their vessels sail under a UAE flag.
Indian diplomatic sources reached for comment on this case prosecuted now in Mogadishu wouldn't know if the vessel is India registered.
On 3. June 2009 another illegal charcoal thief like this - en route from Southern Somalia to Sharja in the UAE had been arrested by the local coastguards from Central Somalia, who held the vessel for a few days for lack of a local court. Ismail Abdurehman, the captain of MSV VISVAKALYAN complained back then that the Somalis of Hobyo took all the food on the dhow and robbed them of all their belongings.However, when on 11. June 2009 the dhow was released, the Portuguese warship 'NRP Corte-Real' the next day - early on Saturday morning - intercepted the vessel some 20 nautical miles south-east of Hobyo in the territorial waters of Somalia.
Instead of escorting the blockade breaking and illegal contraband carrying ship to the TFG courts in Mogadishu, NATO, under whose command the Portuguese were operating, assisted the fourteen Indian sailors to escape with their vessel and loot to the UAE.
The United Arab Emirates are the worst culprit in the detrimental and illegal charcoal racket, stripping Somalia of its last trees . Numerous appeals - even to the Royal families of the UAE - since the late 80s by the Somali government as well as environmental organizations have fallen on deaf ears. Charcoal export from Somalia had been banned already by the Siad Barre government and the bann has been regularly renewed by the subsequent governments since. Despite the fact that even famous Imams from Somali, the UAE and Qatar had declared this stolen charcoal "haram" (unclean according to the Holy Qoran), people in the Emirates continue to use it in their charcoal stoves and grills, to cook and to roast their meat.
If finally an import ban by the UAE and the other states of the Saudi peninsula would be imposed for charcoal from Somalia, if the foreign warships would not assist the smugglers and the courts of the local, regional as well as federal governances of Somalia increase the punishment drastically, the catastrophic environmental destruction could be stopped. The present drought and starvation of people in Puntland and other areas of Somalia is the direct result of this massive deforestation caused by illegal charcoal export.
In a similar development the new Minister for Livestock of Somaliland, Dr. Axmed Xaashi Oday Ayaa had arrested local lorries carrying the illegal charcoal from the inland towards the port of Berbera at the Gulf of Aden coast.
