Judge says Taiwanese fishing
boat where 2 men died
stays in Hawaii for now

A ruling comes hours before the
ship was to leave this morning

---

By Leila Fujimori
lfujimori@starbulletin.com

A federal judge held a 3 a.m. hearing today and ordered a continuance of a temporary restraining order until late this afternoon to hold a Taiwanese fishing vessel that was the scene of an alleged double murder.

Judge Susan Mollway is allowing attorneys Jay Friedheim and Arnold Phillips II time to meet requirements to have the ship, the Full Means No. 2, held until the crewmen receive their back wages.

All 30 Chinese crewmen had been detained by the federal government as material witnesses in the case in which the ship's cook, Shi Lei, 21, of China, was charged with killing the ship's captain and first mate, then hijacking the vessel on the high seas March 14.

Friedheim and Phillips represent all but one of the 30 detained crewmen.

The was due to set sail at 6 a.m. today with a Japanese crew of five, which would head out to fishing grounds, meet up with another ship, take on more crew and resume fishing, said Bryan Ho, an attorney for the ship's owner, FCF Fishing Co. and Full Means Fishery Co. Ltd.

The crewmen's lawyers have filed a suit in federal court for their back wages and to protect the rights of the seamen, Phillips said.

"They were going to be left here," he said.

The company "left them without compensation, without repatriation, without any way to get back," Phillips said. "They were going to dump them in the hands of the American government to take them home.

"That's not what the law provides and that's not what they're entitled to. Fortunately they landed in an American port where they have these rights," he said. "The owner was just going to run roughshod over them."

Ho said the company owner wants to cut his losses, but was going to pay back wages.

"It's a horribly unjust situation. But for the federal government detaining these guys, they would be out at sea already," Ho said. "Because the federal government had been detaining the boat, they can't be waiting around for the government to be done with them."

Ho said there is a misconception that the owner was not intending to pay the men. "For some reason this situation got thrown out of proportion," he said.

The cargo hold of the ship, meanwhile, contains a catch of shark fins, which Ho said is not illegal because the boat is a foreign flag vessel, registered in the Seychelles. He explained that should not pose a legal problem for the boat since the boat was not supposed to stop here.

Ho explained shark-finning is not illegal, but federal and state laws passed recently require that shark fins found on U.S. flag vessels have matching carcasses.

Phillips remarked, "They want to get their million-dollar cargo to market."