Seychelles refuse to take Somali pirates held by Danes

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark said on Tuesday the Seychelles had refused to take 25 suspected Somali pirates detained by one of its warships earlier this month, highlighting the difficulty of putting pirates on trial.

The pirates remain aboard the Danish warship Absalon which captured them and their fishing vessel on January 7.

Denmark had sought to send them to the Seychelles under a May 2011 agreement that was supposed to allow the Danish navy to hand over suspected pirates for prosecution in the Indian Ocean island country.

Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said Danish diplomats were working to find an alternative to the Seychelles, which lie about 1,600 kilometres (990 miles) off the east coast of Africa, to try the pirates in the region.

"It's not a good situation obviously," Thorning-Schmidt said. "Now we just need the extradition agreements."

A Danish government official said last May's agreement did not oblige the Seychelles to take pirates, but only to consider on a case-by-case basis whether its judicial system had the capacity to handle the cases.

Many suspected pirates arrested off the Horn of Africa are released after only a short detention because governments are reluctant to bring them to trial and prison facilities in Somalia are inadequate.

Danish Foreign Ministry officials declined to say which countries Copenhagen has asked to try the pirates, but Denmark last year sent 24 pirates to Kenya for trial.

Thomas Winkler, Denmark's top legal official dealing with piracy, told Reuters the main challenge was to find prisons where convicted pirates could serve their sentences.