US forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, in a major escalation of Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against the South American country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro.
US forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, in a major escalation of Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against the South American country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro.
I’m not a lawyer but afaik the sanctioned ships are treated kinda like “legal piracy” as country can board it even in international waters if it knows it’s performing a sanctioned operation like transferring goods to a place it’s not allowed to or the ship is stateless or sneaky (no transponder etc).
At the end of the day these legalities are purely made up to satisfy treaties rather than ethics or rationality so it’s silly to try to look for rational meaning here.
The law holds that states cannot commit piracy. That is solely a crime for private entities.
Ships can only fall under the jurisdiction of the country of registration, the country in whose coastal waters the ship is in, or - in exceptional circumstances of piracy, slavery or statelessness of the ship - anyone.