West African Pirate Capture?

With a hat tip to World Maritime News.com, comes a confusing tale from the BBC on the possible capture of pirates titled: S Leone catches Guinea 'pirates':

Eight Guineans have been arrested by Sierra Leone for an act of piracy against locally-licensed Chinese fishermen inside Sierra Leonean waters. The Guinean authorities say the men, including several officials, were on a legitimate fisheries protection patrol. Sierra Leone naval officers say they interrupted an armed hold-up involving two speedboats crewed by armed men 18 nautical miles off Freetown. They seized one speedboat and said the other escaped towards Guinea. Daniel Mansaray, commander of the Sierra Leone Armed Forces Maritime Wing, told Reuters news agency that the arrested men were all "Guinean pirates", armed with AK-47 automatic rifles. He said they included two fisheries inspectors, a naval lieutenant and an army lieutenant from the Guinean armed forces and that they were caught in possession of bags of fish taken off the Sierra Leone-licensed vessels. *** A spokesman for Guinea's navy denied the men were pirates and said they were fisheries officers accompanied by military personnel on an official patrol. But he had no explanation for what the Guineans were doing within Sierra Leone's waters.

Well, I have at least one possible explanation...