Italian Marines shoot at Indian sailors - 2 victims

[james84]

Don't know if you heard this... last wednesday two Italian Marines on a cargo ship sailing off the coast of India reckoned a pirate attack was being carried on and fired against a fishing boat, killing two Indian fishermen. The cargo landed in India some hours ago and the two soldiers have been arrested. They risk life-jailing or even death penalty, and in the meantime a diplomatic clash between India and Italy arised on whether or not the shooting happened in international waters. If so, the Marines would be trialled in Italy along with the rest of the crew (according to the admiralty law, they were into Italian "territory"), in the latter case only the Marines would be trialled in India as far as I could understand.
As one can easily imagine there are two contrasting versions and I don't want to get into this nor debate on whether this was an unfortunate incident or not because what happened has not yet been cleared.
There is an international task force protecting the area around the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian Ocean in order to protect the ships from pirate attacks, but do the agreements allow armed military personnel to be on board ships belonging to private companies (which could easily rely on private contractors) for this kind of protection? Quite weird... Any more info on that? What do the other countries do?

[LEBTowerGuy]

The question arises as to what flag the cargo vessel was flying, and the agreements with that country and Italy as to a military presence on board. Maritime law is very strange as far as responsibility for actions taken from one ship to another. Also were the Marines on duty at the time or were they possibly freelancing some mercenary duty.

[james84]

The question arises as to what flag the cargo vessel was flying, and the agreements with that country and Italy as to a military presence on board. Maritime law is very strange as far as responsibility for actions taken from one ship to another. Also were the Marines on duty at the time or were they possibly freelancing some mercenary duty.

At all, in the photos showing them with the Indian police they both wear a uniform, if they were there as contractors they would wear "civilian" clothes!

[sprocky]

Even if they were found guilty in an Indian court they will not face death penalty. Check out how many faced that kind of punishment (including execution) within the last 20 years. Indian locals make joke about their laws. They say: "If there is a law that puts you into jail there is at least one that gets you out from there."

This will end as usual: apologies, some money to the left behinds and they can go home.