The Arctic Sea investigation

I was about to write to The Times of Malta when I read in the paper that the hijackers of the Arctic Sea are being tried in Moscow. I wanted to point out that because the ship was registered under the Maltese flag and therefore comes under the sovereign state of Malta, the Malta Maritime Authority should have taken immediate action to ask the Russian government to extradite the hijackers to be tried in Malta under our jurisdiction.

The Russian Navy boarded the Arctic Sea in international waters and arrested the hijackers and whisked them away to Russia for reasons they know best. The trial of the hijackers in Russia is illegal and their defence attorney quite rightly pointed out that the "Russian court does not have the right to hear the case". The only jurisdictions that can try the hijackers are Sweden if the hijacking took place in their territorial waters or else in Malta, the Flag State, but definitely Russia has no right to try the hijackers who were of different nationalities.

The MMA should have immediately realised that this issue is their responsibility. It is all very well for them to say that they were investigating and following up the progress in conjunction with other countries but in the final analysis the responsibility rests solely with the Flag State.

We have heard the usual mantra from MMA on many occasions in instances of marine accidents that they are investigating but that is as far as it goes. The results of these investigations are never made public.

While on the subject of investigations, can anyone tell me why these investigations are carried out by the MMA and not by a judicial inquiry under a magistrate which is the only truly independent inquiry under Maltese law? There should be an independent judicial body for maritime affairs under a magistrate who would appoint experts in this field. There are many qualified maritime lawyers, marine architects, engineers etc. who are capable of investigating serious maritime accidents at sea.