An MP has voiced his concern over the legal ramifications surrounding the pirate hijack of a Saudi oil tanker.

The Sirius Star is currently anchored off the Somali coast. The 25 strong crew on board, including two Britons, are said to be unarmed.

As negotiations over the group’s ransom demands continue, Canterbury and Whitstable MP Julian Brazier is disappointed to learn the British government may support a proposed EU resolution treating pirates as criminals.

Speaking to kmfm, he said: “If you’re dealing with an act of war, the traditional view of pirates is that people on a heavily armed ship, who arrive over the horizon attacking another vessel should be engaged as enemy and not arrested.

“In short, you should try and sink their ship.”

Mr Brazier’s comments come after the Indian Navy sank a seized cargo ship and fishing vessel in the Gulf of Aden, several hundred kilometres north of where the Sirius Star was captured.

Under the resolution, EU member states would be obliged to give pirates a fair trial, which Mr Brazier believes would be difficult to enforce.

“In a recent case, the Royal Navy arrested a group of Kenyan pirates and convinced the Kenyan authorities to take them on.

~Listen: MP Julian Brazier explains why we should blow pirate ships out of the water>>>

“But you couldn’t hand this current group over to the Somalis, because they’d either be released in some ports and in others they’d be executed on the quayside.”

Mr Brazier confirmed the leader of the House of Commons Harriet Harman is planning on taking the EU recommendation forward, a move he feels would place naval servicemen in undue danger.