BIMCO, the International Chamber of Shipping, INTERCARGO, INTERTANKO and the International Transport Workers’ Federation were one in condemning last week the execution of a seafarer by Somali pirates who had hijacked the Beluga Nomination in the Indian Ocean 390 nautical miles north of the Seychelles. This was plain murder, but what did people expect? Even the pirates of old were brutish; they killed, tortured and even sodomized their captives. And as we’ve been saying all along, this is war and the first casualty of war is humaneness. (more…)