![]() ![]() The pirates had been expecting the worst. It also marked the first meeting in more than a century between pirates and American due process. “capture of suspected pirates in recent memory,” writes Bahar, the Navy legal officer who interviewed the pirates, in his law review article. In January 2006, the Navy captured 10 pirates who had commandeered an Indian dhow and gone hunting for a more lucrative catch. Muse’s prosecution for piracy is a rarity, but pirates no longer are. recognized, was seized as a pirate vessel and brought to New York as a prize to be divided up in court. ![]() The ship, flying a strange flag and not a part of any armed force the U.S. warship captured the Ambrose Light, part of an insurgent force fighting the Colombian government. Muse’s is the first pirate case to be heard in the Southern District of New York-or anywhere in America, for that matter-since 1885, says Alfred Rubin, a law professor emeritus at Tufts University and author of The Law of Piracy. He adds: “It’s also claimed that he had a fairly good command of English, which I haven’t seen demonstrated.” Weinstein says it “seems a bit dubious” that Muse was the leader, given his estimated age of between 16 and 20. He is the one who distributed to other pirates the $30,000 seized from the Maersk’s safe and who later issued the pirates’ demands to the U.S. ![]() It’s unlikely Muse would have much luck with such a defense: He was the first pirate to board the Maersk Alabama, he fired his gun at the captain, and he acted as leader of the four-man crew, according to the criminal complaint. Gutoff speculates the British vice-admiralty court that tried them en masse off the west coast of Africa may have been less swayed by the merits of the defense than with the prospect of executing so many Englishmen. Most of his pirates won acquittals by arguing they had been coerced into the pirate’s life, says Jonathan Gutoff, an expert on piracy at Roger Williams University, who is researching the case for a forthcoming article. One of their defenses may come from a British piracy trial in 1722 against the crew of Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts. DISTANT PAST MAY GUIDEĪccused pirates may not only be turning to 21st century international law for precedent. The irony of that hasn’t been lost on scholars, who note one of the earliest goals of international law was to facilitate the prosecution of pirates.Ī “trend in international law, which seeks to take the side of individuals against governments, has run into the oldest function of international law, which is to enable governments to take effective measures against international lawlessness,” says Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at Northwestern University with an expertise in international law. These and other developments in international law are likely to make prosecuting pirates a more complicated matter. warships are entitled to constitutional protections, as if they were being held at a county jail. He speculates that the courts, concerned the Navy is detaining innocent foreign fishermen, could rule suspected pirates held on U.S. Michael Bahar suggests the Fourth Amendment may someday regulate arrest and detention on the high seas. ![]() In the alternative, if acquitted or released from prison, he may argue against repatriation to Somalia on human rights concerns.Īnd in a 2007 law review article, Navy Lt. Somali pirates, some legal experts say, can seek protection and due process rights under the Geneva Conventions by arguing that, as part of a nascent and impromptu Somali coast guard, they are lawful combatants. Muse may well be able to lay claim to more legal rights than any pirate ever to precede him. Once labeled by the law as the enemy of all mankind, pirates have no shortage of legal defenses. He is the sole surviving member of the pirate crew that attacked the Maersk Alabama, an American cargo ship, and kidnapped its captain in April. system of justice,” starting with the role of the lawyers appointed to represent him, says one of those lawyers, Philip Weinstein of the New York City public defender’s office.īut if Muse doesn’t know quite what to make of the law, it’s unclear that the law is sure what to make of Muse. The youthful Somali has “virtually no understanding of the U.S. Abduwali Abdiqadir Muse certainly hadn’t anticipated the possibility. It’s been a long time since a pirate faced his reckoning on the island of Manhattan. French soldiers move in to arrest presumed Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. ![]()
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