The Somali pirate involved in taking an American ship captain hostage has arrived in New York where he will be put on trial.
The suspect will be the first person to be tried in the United States on piracy charges in more than a century. He was taken aboard a US Navy ship shortly before Navy Seal snipers on the destroyer USS Bainbridge killed three of his colleagues holding hostage Richard Phillips, the American captain of the Maersk Alabama merchant ship.
Grinning for the cameras, the young man was handcuffed and had a chain wrapped around his waist. His left hand was heavily bandaged from the wound he suffered during the skirmish on the ship two weeks ago.
The age and real name of the pirate are unclear. His mother says he is 16-year-old Abdi Wali Abdulqadir Muse; other reports call him Abduhl Wali-i-Musi.
A law enforcement official says he is at least 18, meaning prosecutors will not have to take extra legal steps to put him on trial in a US court.
His arrival came on the same day that his mother appealed to President Barack Obama for his release. She says her son was coaxed into piracy by ”gangsters with money”.
”I appeal to President Obama to pardon my teenager; I request him to release my son or at least allow me to see him and be with him during the trial,” Adar Abdirahman Hassan said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press from her home in the Somali town of Galka’yoia.
Ron Kuby, a New York-based civil rights lawyer, said he has been in discussions about forming a legal team to represent the Somali.
”I think there’s a grave question as to whether America was in violation of principles of truce in warfare on the high seas,” said Kuby. ”This man seemed to come on to the Bainbridge under a flag of truce to negotiate. He was then captured. There is a question whether he is lawfully in American custody and serious questions as to whether he can be prosecuted because of his age.”
His arrival in New York came as Somali pirates freed a chemical tanker, the Stolt Strength, and its 23-strong Filipino crew members this morning after holding them hostage for more than five months.
Captain Dexter Custodio, a spokesperson for the Philippine ship owner Sagana Shipping, said securing the safe release of the crew and the vessel was ”difficult and protracted” and the company was ”extremely pleased” with the result.
”They have been released, thank God!” said Doris Deseo, the wife of Carlo Deseo, the ship’s 31-year-old third mate. ”They are no longer in the hands of the pirates. I am super happy. That’s the only thing we have been waiting for.”
The ship was seized on 10 November last year by pirates in the Gulf of Aden while it was carrying a cargo of phosphoric acid from Dakar in Senegal to Kandla, India. Earlier reports said the Stolt Strength had been heading to Japan.
Custodio said he could not comment on whether a ransom had been paid. ”I have no idea because it was the company’s crisis management team that has the data about that,” he told the Associated Press.
Family members of the crew said the Somali pirates earlier demanded $5-million but that the amount had been reduced to about $2,2-million last week. – guardian.co.uk