A South Korean court has jailed for life a Somali pirate after he was convicted of the attempted murder of the captain of a hijacked ship.
The trial of Mahomed Araye and several of his accomplices marks the first time South Korea has punished foreign pirates.
Araye was one of several Somalis captured in January when South Korean Special Forces stormed the South Korean-flagged ship Samho Jewelry, hijacked in the Arabian Sea.
The court in the port of Busan ruled that Araye was involved in the shooting of Seok Hae-kyun, captain of the vessel, during the forced boarding by the navy Jan. 15.
The captain was shot in the stomach and remains in poor condition in hospital.
Eight pirates were killed and five were arrested during the boarding and ensuing gun battle, six days after the pirates had seized the 11,500-ton chemical carrier.
The same court in Busan — South Korea's second largest city after Seoul — also sentenced another Somali man to 15 years in jail and gave two other pirates 13-year prison terms.
A third man involved in the hijacking is being tried separately and could be sentenced next month.
Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty for Araye and life imprisonment for his accomplices because the pirates allegedly used the ship's crew as human shields.
When formal charges were laid in February, prosecutors said the five could be among pirates who were given a large ransom payment to release the freighter's sister ship, the Samho Dream, last year.
"We have discovered that some of the pirates in the Samho Jewelry case were also involved in the kidnapping of the Samho Dream," Jeong Jeom-shik, the prosecutors' chief investigator, said.
Pirates released the Samho Dream in November after seven months of captivity in Somalia. The vessel's owner, Samho Shipping, which had headquarters in Busan, reportedly paid the pirates more than $9 million in ransom.
Prosecutors in Busan said some of the Samho Dream's crew identified the five alleged pirates in the Samho Jewelry case as being among the pirates who held them captive in Somalia last year.
The International Maritime Bureau has cautioned about the forced boarding of pirated ships by navy, special operations and coast guard teams because of the possibility of harming the crew during gun battles.
The IMB recommends that forced boardings are attempted only after consultation with a vessel's owners and the flag state.
Officials at the IMB's Piracy Reporting Center, which has headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, said they are concerned about the increase in pirate attacks and hostage taking, most of which happens in the seas between India and Africa.
Last year there were 445 recorded pirate attacks, a 10 percent increase on 2009. Pirates took 1,181 hostages, the highest number since the IMB began started monitoring the area around the Gulf of Aden in 1991.
