![]() ![]() ![]() Navy, said that naval officers shot and killed Muse's companions while they were trying to surrender. Muse and his "gang" had the option to leave with tens of thousands of dollars from the ship's safe, but he insisted on multimillion dollar ransoms, McGuire said.ĭoherty countered that a Somali elder, who was a contact of the U.S. McGuire, the prosecutor, played down the circumstances of Muse's childhood and emphasized "his choices and his actions." Lee Cassanelli that argued that Puntland officials provided tacit sanctioning and encouragement for pirate networks in exchange for bribes. Muse gave the government "many ages" and "used his youthful appearance" to his advantage, McGuire said.Ī defense sentencing memo said that Muse was abused by his father and left home for days after being tied to a tree and told he would be eaten by a lion.ĭoherty argued that Muse was driven to piracy by his poverty. She added that seven of his teeth have been removed, and two more must be extracted.ĭoherty said the dental work also corroborated Muse's parents' statements that their child is quite young: The defense contends that he was 16 years old when he led the hijacking, but the prosecutor said that Muse lied about his age and was prosecuted as an adult. Neither the federal judge nor the prosecutor was moved by Doherty's remarks about Muse's upbringing amid crushing poverty, drought, hunger and government-sanctioned criminality pervasive in Somalia.ĭoherty said that birth records in Somalia were obliterated by years of civil war, and that Somalia has topped Foreign Policy's failed states list for three years.ĭental treatment Muse received at the Manhattan Detention Center confirmed that Muse grew up with "severe" and "acute" malnutrition in Puntland, an autonomous region of Somalia, Doherty said. Attorney Brendan Robert McGuire said.Īlthough Muse was very thin, one of his victims said in an interview following the sentencing that he appeared to have "gained weight." "He relished in the suffering of his victims," Assistant U.S. ![]() District Judge Loretta Preska, moved to tears by the letters of the hijacking's victims, said that she grounded her top-line sentence on the "extreme level of violence and sadism" that Muse showed aboard one of the ships. She added that there will be "no chance" that his parents, still living in Somalia, will be alive when he gets out. Muse's prison term, which spans more than 33 years, ensures that when he is released from prison, he will be older than the average life expectancy of a Somali man, Muse's federal defender Fiona Doherty said. Wright, a third officer aboard the Maersk, said that Muse and his companions kept his shipmates locked in a 130 to 140 degree room near the equator, and they were barely able to walk when the were released." government."Ĭolin Wright, one of Muse's victims, advocated for more than 700 merchant marines still in captivity off the coast of Somalia and blasted the ship's captain for steering the crew into pirate-infested waters. "I ask for forgiveness to all the people who I harmed and to the U.S. "I am sorry very much about what happened to the victims who were in the ship," said Muse, dressed in a green long-sleeved shirt and khaki pants at the sentencing hearing. Navy took Muse into custody when Muse thought he was negotiating the release of the captain, as SEALs killed the other pirates and rescued Capt. Prosecutors said Muse distributed $30,000 in cash taken from the Maersk to the other pirates on the lifeboat. The rest of the pirates took the ship's captain, Richard Phillips, hostage for four days, after offering to leave the Maersk in exchange for a lifeboat and Muse, who was briefly held in the ship's safe room with his hands bound by wire. Once Muse boarded the ship, a crew member lunged out of hiding to tackle and subdue him. Prosecutors said Muse was the leader of the pirates and among the first to storm the Maersk Alabama after shooting at the container ship from their boat. He pleaded guilty in May two counts each of hijacking, kidnapping and hostage taking. Remarkably youthful and underweight in appearance, Muse, who is thought to be in his late teens, appeared contrite during the sentencing hearing. Muse was the sole survivor of the four-member Somali pirate crew that attacked a U.S. MANHATTAN (CN) - A federal judge tearfully read victims letters on Wednesday before sentencing Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse to 405 months in a federal prison, the maximum penalty the law allowed, for leading the April 8, 2009, hijackings of the Maersk Alabama container ship in the Indian Ocean. ![]()
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