December 16, 2008: On December 13th, the Indian warship, INS Mysore, interrupted a pirate attack on a merchant ship, tracked the speedboats back to their mother ship, and captured it and 23 pirates (12 Somalis and 11 Yemenis) along with weapons, communications and GPS gear. The incident occurred 250 kilometers east of the Yemeni port of Aden. The Mysore was 25 kilometers away from the merchant ship when they got the distress call. The Mysore promptly dispatched its helicopter, which chased the two pirate speed boats away and found the mother ship. The Mysore rushed to the scene, and sent commandos to capture the mother ship,

Since all this happened in international waters, there is a problem with finding a country that will accept, and prosecute, the pirates. The Indian Foreign Ministry is working on that, and may be doing so for a while. Since World War II, national and international laws for dealing with pirates (which used to mean trying and executing the pirates on the spot) have been discarded. But nothing took the place of those procedures, because it was believed that piracy was no longer a problem.

Some nations working the anti-piracy patrol, have signed deals with Kenya, which sends pirates captured off the Somali coast, to Kenyan courts for prosecution. These deals provide cash to help defer the costs of prosecution and incarceration, which would otherwise be a burden for a poor nation like Kenya.