State jurisdiction
Piracy jure gentium/maritime terrorism
Santa Maria incident
In 1961, during the period of the dictatorship of Dr Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in
Portugal, the Portuguese cruise liner Santa Maria was seized by force on the high seas
in the Caribbean by persons under the leadership of a Portuguese political dissident,
Captain Galvão, who had boarded the ship as passengers at two of its ports of call.
During the seizure, one of the ship’s officers was killed, the captain and other officers
were placed under guard but no violence was directed at other persons on the ship and
there was no taking or damage of property. The Times (London), 25 January 1961
quoted Captain Galvão as declaring that the seizure of the Santa Maria was “the first
step aimed at overthrowing the Dictator Salazar of Portugal.” The political rather than
private ends of the seizure of the Santa Maria and the fact that the seizure was
effected by persons on board the ship rather than by persons from another ship took
the seizure outside the scope of piracy jure gentium as defined in both customary
international law and in Article 15 of the Geneva Convention on the High Seas 1958
(now Article 101 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982). See
LC Green, “The Santa Maria: Rebels or pirates”, 37 British Year Book of
International Law 496 (1961). The Santa Maria incident ended when Captain Galvão
and his followers navigated the ship to Brazil, a state with which Portugal had no
effective extradition treaty.
Achille Lauro incident
The following description of the Achille Lauro incident and its immediate aftermath is
taken from G Plant, “The Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against
the Safety of Maritime Navigation”, (1990) 39 ICLQ 27 at pp 27-28:
On 7 October 1985, four armed men claiming to represent the Palestine Liberation Front took
control of the Italian-flag cruise liner Achille Lauro on the high seas about 30 miles off Port
Said and held the crew and passengers hostage. They had boarded her in port in Genoa posing
as legitimate passengers. They demanded the release of 50 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel
and threatened to blow up the ship, if intervention were attempted, and to start to kill the
passengers, if their demands were not met. Subsequently, a Jewish American passenger, Mr
Klinghoffer, was shot dead and his body thrown overboard. Several days later the four men
gave themselves up to the Egyptian authorities.
On 11 October an Egyptian civilian aircraft was intercepted by United States military aircraft
over the Mediterranean Sea and instructed to land at an air force base in Sicily. Four
Palestinians on board were detained by the Italian authorities and subsequently indicted and
convicted in Genoa for offences related to the hijacking of the ship and the death of Mr
Klinghoffer. Italy refused a request from the United States for their extradition.
The President of the UN Security Council condemned the incident in a statement on behalf of
all its members; and a resolution on terrorism adopted by consensus by the UN General
Assembly in December 1985 (Resolution 40/61) included a paragraph requesting the
International Maritime Organisation to recommend appropriate action. Italy put forward a
proposal, later co-sponsored by Austria and Egypt, to negotiate a convention against maritime
terrorism. [This proposal was the genesis of the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful
Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation 1988, to which Australia is a state party.]
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