{"id":569932,"date":"2010-05-19T00:39:38","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T04:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opiniojuris.org\/?p=12451"},"modified":"2010-05-19T00:39:38","modified_gmt":"2010-05-19T04:39:38","slug":"somali-%e2%80%9cpirate%e2%80%9d-pleads-guilty-and-avoids-life-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/569932","title":{"rendered":"Somali \u201cPirate\u201d Pleads Guilty and Avoids Life Sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Julian Ku <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The young Somali captured last year in dramatic U.S. Navy operation has plea bargained himself<\/a> into a minimum 27 year sentence.<\/p>\n

\n

A Somali man has pleaded guilty in New York’s court to seizing a US ship and kidnapping its captain last year.<\/p>\n

Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse now faces a minimum of 27 years in prison. He is expected to be sentenced in October.<\/p>\n

Muse is the only surviving attacker on the Maersk Alabama merchant ship off Somalia’s coast in April 2009.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A couple of observations about this result, which should caution folks excited about the effectiveness of U.S. federal courts in combatting piracy. (It appears the defendant avoided a piracy conviction and settled for a lesser charge).<\/p>\n

1) Timing<\/strong>: Muse was captured in March 2009 and charged with, among other things, “piracy as defined in the law of nations,” under 18 U.S.C. 1651.<\/a> It has taken 13 months to get a plea bargain on a lesser charge??? \u00a0If we were just going to plea bargain him, why did it take so long?<\/p>\n

2) Evidence: <\/strong>The logistics of finding translators, and dealing with classified evidence, is another reason these trials are going to take a fair amount of time. \u00a0Case in point: the federal trial in Norfolk, Va of another group of Somali pirates was recently delayed for five months just so the parties could sort through classified evidence and find translators.<\/p>\n

I don’t say federal courts are doing a bad job here. \u00a0But the logistical difficulties are going to make this a very weak and ineffective deterrent to further piracy. As Anne Applebaum notes<\/a>, the other option was tried by the Russians recently when they “released” a group of Somali pirates on a dinghy 350 miles from shore without an navigation equipment. \u00a0The 21st century version of “walking the plank”?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Julian Ku The young Somali captured last year in dramatic U.S. Navy operation has plea bargained himself into a minimum 27 year sentence. A Somali man has pleaded guilty in New York’s court to seizing a US ship and kidnapping its captain last year. Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse now faces a minimum of 27 years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}