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US Charges Young Somali with Piracy on High Seas
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Posted on April 27, 2009 at 07:13:55 PM by mb

US Charges Young Somali with Piracy on High Seas

By Andre de Nesnera, VOA, Washington, 27 April 2009

A young Somali man has appeared in a U.S. court charged with piracy.

Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse is the sole survivor of a pirate attack on a U.S. cargo ship earlier this month off the coast of Somalia.

On April 8, Somali pirates tried to commandeer the container ship Maersk Alabama - but failed to do so after the 20 man crew regained control of the vessel. The pirates took its captain, Richard Phillips, aboard a lifeboat and held him hostage for several days. Muse was injured in a skirmish with the Maersk Alabama crew and was in custody of the U.S. military when on April 12 Navy SEAL snipers shot and killed three pirates and rescued Captain Phillips.

A 21 Apr 2009 New York courtroom sketch of piracy suspect Muse (R) crying as the judge asks his lawyer (L) about Muse's family and age
Muse appeared before a U.S. Federal judge in New York on April 21 and was charged with - among other things - piracy.

J. Peter Pham, a maritime security expert with James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia says there is a specific U.S. legal statute dealing with piracy.

"The controlling statute is section 1651 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code - it's the Federal Penal Code. And it's pretty sweet and to the point," he said. ''It says, literally: 'Whoever on the high seas commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States shall be imprisoned for life.' It's going to be a federal trial in the federal district court of New York and it's going to be a jury trial. And the defendant will have his day in court and if convicted, the sentence is life imprisonment."

Pham says the U.S. hasn't prosecuted anyone for the crime of piracy in more than a century.

"So it's going to be a new experience both for the prosecution and the defense. It's not unlike the situation we found ourselves in the early 1990s when Andrew McCarthy [former assistant U.S. attorney leading the prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others in the 1995 terrorism trial] and his team, in the same district court, had to bring themselves up to speed on the law of terrorism. So it's going to be a new experience," he said.

Analysts, such as Roger Middleton with the London-based Chatham House, say U.S. authorities could have transferred Muse over to another country for trial.

"They could have handed him over to Kenya because they have a Memorandum of Understanding with the Kenyan government that Kenya will prosecute pirates captured by the United States," he aid. "But I think because American citizens and an American company and an American ship was so intimately involved in that particular instance, there was a desire to take him back to America and prosecute him there under American law," said Middleton.

Abdiweli Muse (R) is led into Federal Plaza by Federal agents in New York City, 20 Apr 2009

Now that Muse is in the United States, and given the publicity of the upcoming legal proceedings, some analysts say it could turn into a show trial.

"It could turn into a circus, but it could also serve as a legal precedent as well, depending on how the trial goes," said Peter Chalk, who is with the RAND Corporation. "The cost and the logistics associated with getting these people back to the United States in order to stand trial - I can't see the U.S. wanting to do this on a consistent basis. So I think they are going to continually be looking for another alternative which precludes having to bring these people back to stand trial in the U.S," he said.

Chalk and others say the alternative, inevitably, points back to Kenya.

But they also say to resolve the piracy problem the international community must address the lack of governance in Somalia - a country described by most analysts as a failed state. But many experts say the world community lacks the political willingness to tackle what seems to be an intractable problem.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-04-25-voa18.cfm


Teen pirate's American dream goes awry

Somali finally makes it to the U.S., but as a prisoner.

By Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Rukmini Callimachi, April 26, 2009.AP

NAIROBI, Kenya — The scrawny teenager promised his mother comfort and riches beyond her wildest dreams.

It was a steamy day at their crumbling home in central Somalia. They had no running water or electricity, and the mother's face glistened with sweat after a morning of selling milk. He looked up from the bowl of rice she had just served him and said, "I am saddened by the way we live," the mother recalled.

She said her son often spoke of the American dream, of longing to cross the seas and strike it rich in the wealthiest country in the world. He promised he would give her anything she wanted, that she would no longer live in their one-room shack, where water for cooking and bathing has to be hauled in on the backs of donkeys.

"I will take you wherever you want," the teenager said. "You will no longer live under this boiling sun."

Last week, Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse arrived in the country he aspired to for so long. But he sleeps in a cramped jail cell in New York, awaiting trial on charges of piracy that could keep him behind bars for life.

Ship attack

On the morning of April 8, Muse was the first of four pirates to scale the walls of the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama as it sailed off Somalia's coast, and he fired a shot at the captain, Richard Phillips, according to the criminal complaint filed against him. The complaint says Muse acted as the leader, demanding in broken English that the ship's engines be stopped.

A gun strapped to his skinny frame, he asked for the phone number of the ship's owner to begin the multimillion-dollar negotiation for the vessel's release, authorities said.

It was the first armed takeover of a U.S.-flagged vessel in more than three decades, and when he realized the ship was American, he whooped with joy.

"He was surprised he was on a U.S. ship," said U.S. crew member A.T.M. Reza, among the first to encounter Muse. "He kept asking, 'You all come from America?' Then he claps and cheers and smiles. He caught himself a big fish."

Reza said Muse was friendly and smiling at first. He said the teen ordered the crew to lower a ladder to the small skiff below where the other pirates were waiting, and they scampered up. The majority of the Alabama's 20-man crew had taken refuge inside a locked compartment, and Muse told Phillips to radio his men and tell them to come out, according to crew members.

They waited, and only one of the other sailors came out of hiding. Muse was told that the others were afraid to surrender as long as the pirates were armed — and so the teen put down his gun, crewmen said. He then went to explore the ship, at one point shining his flashlight on a crewman hiding in a darkened engine room.

A struggle ensued, and Reza stabbed Muse in the hand with a knife. They were able to overpower Muse, according to the complaint.

Ken Quinn, the ship's second mate, was hiding in the safe room when they came in with the tied-up teen. In the tense hours that followed, Quinn dressed Muse's wounds.

As the hours passed, Muse begged for mercy. He talked about how it was his dream to go to America. At one point, he turned to Quinn and said in broken English: "I want to go to America. Can you fix it? I want to go. Can I go?" Quinn recalled.

Four days later, Muse surrendered to seek medical attention for his hand aboard the U.S. warship that had rushed to help the Alabama.

"His dreams come true," Reza said, "but he comes to the U.S. not as a visitor, but as a prisoner."

Unlike so many other pirate attacks off Somalia, this one didn't end with a million-dollar payout. After a five-day standoff, U.S. snipers killed Muse's three comrades.

In his first appearance Tuesday in a New York courtroom, Muse was portrayed by defense lawyers as a scared kid. At 5 feet 2 inches, he stood no taller than his female attorney.

One of the lawyers said they planned to contact his father in Somalia to testify. There was a lag as an interpreter relayed in Somali what the lawyer had said. As soon as he understood his family would be contacted, Muse let out a howl and then broke into sobs, hiding his face with his hand.

Life of poverty

Muse was born on an old sack on the floor of a thatched-roof house in Bur Yaqab, a village in central Somalia. His mother, Adar Abdirahman Hassan, 40, grew up herding sheep. Like most of Africa's poor, she doesn't know the year he was born, but both she and his father insist he is 16.

Prosecutors say he is at least 18, a two-year gap that will be the difference in whether he is tried as an adult and faces a minimum of life in prison or tried as a minor and freed by his 25th birthday.

A classmate said he thought Muse could be older.

"I think he was one or two years older than me, and I am 16," said Abdisalan Muse, reached by telephone in Galkayo, about 470 miles north of Somalia's seaside capital of Mogadishu. "We did not know him to be a pirate, but he was always with older boys, who are likely to be the ones who corrupted him."

Hassan said her son was an obedient child who sang lullabies to his three younger brothers and one younger sister. When he was about 6, his mother got a divorce and they moved to Galkayo.

"He was very ambitious," said Mohamud Ahmed Shibane, a 19-year-old friend of Muse's in Galkayo. "He used to tell us he would go to the United States of America one day, especially when we were practicing our English. He used to reply, 'I came from America' whenever I asked him where was he from."




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