The author treats Aug. 18 Garmaal and Aug. 23 Jiifle strikes after the LUTUF hijacking as executions, not law: relatives buried fishermen; Deni demanded courts, not missiles; Ankara told the BBC it had “no information”—an evasion that has emptied Nugaal fishing grounds.

Piracy is a crime requiring visit-board-search, identifiable command, and investigation of civilian deaths; applying a combatant kill standard without distinction, proportionality, or a chain of command is “license without liability.”

The 2024 Mogadishu–Turkey maritime pact and SOMTURK operate over Puntland’s Article 54 objection; the piece urges the Aug. 2 U.S.–Puntland Bosaso framework—patrols, intel, courtroom detention—as the alternative before the next returning skiff meets a strike.

Piracy is a crime, not a war, and the men who commit it are not combatants who forfeit the protections of law the moment they climb into a skiff. That distinction has been discarded off Puntland’s coast this month, and fishermen are paying for it with their lives.

On Aug. 18, an airstrike near Garmaal killed four people and wounded two after a small boat returned from the direction of the hijacked cargo vessel M/V LUTUF. A second strike followed near Jiifle on Aug. 23. Combined reporting has put the toll as high as 13. Initial accounts called the dead “suspected pirates.” Within days, relatives were burying men they knew as fishermen. Puntland’s Ministry of Security condemned strikes against civilians in the coastal areas where hijacked vessels are held, and President Said Abdullahi Deni said plainly that suspected pirates should face legal proceedings rather than be killed without due process. He did not need to name Turkey. Turkish vessels, helicopters and drones were reported operating in the area throughout the crisis, and when the BBC asked Ankara directly, Turkey’s........

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