Letters to Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse

There has been a plea for letters to be sent to 15 year-old Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse imprisoned in the US. (Address below)

In May 2011, the teenager was tried as an an adult for offences related to piracy and sentenced to 33 years and nine months in prison. At the time, the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, confirmed the group that Muse was part of were "untrained teenagers with heavy weapons."  The other three teenagers in the group were killed by US snipers.

Write to Muse, the teenager jailed in the US:

Abdulwali Abukhadir Muse 70636-054
 FCI Terre Haute
 Federal Correctional Institution 
 PO Box 33
 Terre Haute, IN 47808
 USA

The Trials in Europe

In the first week of September nine men went on trial in the Netherlands, charged with piracy and attempted murder.They were the remainder of a group of 16 arrested in April 2011 after a gunfire battled with Dutch marines based on the warship Tromp. The Somali were supposedly on board an Iranian fishing vessel. Two Somali men were killed in the gun battle and buried at sea by the crew of the Tromp, seven released and the remaining nine were taken to the Netherlands.

The trial is expected to last less than a month, and if convicted the men face life imprisonment.

This is not the first courtcase in the Netherlands and it will not be the last.

The Netherlands has the dubious honour of being the first European country to try people for 'Somali' piracy - that was the trial of five men arrested in 2009, in June 2010 they were sentenced to five years imprisonment each. The next trial was in August 2011 of five men arrested in November 2010, they received sentences of between four and seven years. One of the people said he was only 13 years old; 'experts' put his age at between 14 and 15 years.

Meanwhile, the Dutch navy arrested another group of alleged Somali pirates last month in the Somalian coastal waters and the group are now in the process of being transported to Rotterdam for trial. (Another group, arrested in July by the Dutch navy, were taken to Oman for trial).

The trial in Italy of nine men is also continuing. The nine are facing not only piracy-related charges but also terrorism. The prosecution are trying to argue that the ransom money was intended for Al-Shabaab.

The four teenagers arrested at the same time as the nine men, were tried separately in a Rome juvenile court. The judge did not accept the charge of terrorism against the youth, but they were found guilty of attempted hi-jacking and were each sentenced to eight years in prison.

In Belgium, a man arrested on DNA evidence was sentenced in January this year to ten years imprisonment.

And in Germany, after a trial lasting nearly a hundred days of actual court appearances, the trial of ten people in Hamburg is nearing an end.

USA Re-defines Piracy

The US Court of Appeal has held that unsuccessful attacks on boats is piracy.

On May 23rd the US Court of Appeal upheld sentences of life + 80 years imprisonment for five Somali men convicted in November 2010 of piracy against a US navy frigate; the court also sent another case back to a lower court to be retried.

It is alleged that the five men sentenced to life plus 80 years had, in April 2010, fired at the USS Nicholas, a warship that had been disguised as a merchant ship. The Somali men had been captured and transported to the US where they had been tried for piracy, found guilty and sentenced. At the same time, there had been another court case with very similar circumstances and even in the same month: in April 2010 a group of Somali men had approached but not boarded the USS Ashland. The men were captured and taken to the US for trial. One man plead guilty and was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, the others had piracy charges against them dismissed as the men had not taken control of or robbed the ship. The US Court of Appeal sent that case back to the lower court for further proceedings.

Thus it is now clear in US law that piracy does not have to actually involve boarding or robbing a vessel, piracy can be a threat of an attack.

In the meantime, prosecution continue to say that they want the death penalty for the remaining three Somali men still awaiting trial for the hi-jacking of the US yacht Quest in February 2011. During that incidence, the four Americans on board the boat were killed.

Life in Abu Dhabi

Ten Somali people accused of piracy were sentenced to 25 years each on Tuesday 22 May for the hi-jacking of a UAE ship on 1st April last year.

The ship was travelling from Australia to Jelel Ali with a load of aluminium when it was hi-jacked and held for one day before a US warship, one of the CTF151 ships boarded the ship and arrested the Somali people on board.

The court ruled that the men would all be deported to Somalia after they had served their sentence.

Mauritius Agrees to Try Somali 'Pirates'

On Friday 18th May, Mauritius announced that as of June it would officially begin to try people arrested by other countries for piracy around the Horn of Africa. This makes four countries in the area willing to prosecute piracy - Kenya, Tanzania, the Seychelles, and now Mauritius.

A final contract between the EU and Tanzania is still awaiting signing before Tanzania can proceed.

And although the Kenyan Court of Appeal is still waiting to deliver its decision about whether Kenya actually has the legal right to try pirates arrested outside of Kenyan waters; Kenya is still accepting alleged pirates to prosecute. Read about that landmark courtcase here.

Many of the countries doing the arresting and capturing, those involved in the 'Coalition of the Willing' are actually unwilling to prosecute the people they themselves capture. The various governments often cite the risks that the people will apply for asylum after any trial.

Maybe therefore they should consider arresting the IUUs and boats dumping toxic waste.

Most of those ship owners and firms that produce the waste are people from the countries that make up Atalanta, Ocean Shield, CTF 151 and IONS and all the other independent navies patrolling in the waters off Somalia. Then there would be no worry about people seeking asylum.

Case Opens in Italy

Nine Somali men appeared in a Roman court on 23rd March. They have been charged with piracy and the State is also alleging that the act of piracy was a fund-raising exercise for Al-Shabaab. This will be one of the first cases where the prosecution will try and prove links between so-called terrorist organisations and piracy. Their next court appearance will be on 15th May 2012.

The nine men were part of a group of fifteen arrested in October 2011 by British and US forces as part of a joint  NATO Ocean Shield operation. They are alleged to have hi-jacked the Italian vessel Montecristo. All fifteen people arrested were handed over to Italian custody and flown to Rome; after a police investigation two of the men were repatriated to Pakistan. Nine adults appeared in court on 23rd March and the remaining four people are juveniles and will be prosecuted in a juvenile court, their case begins on 2nd April.

Sitting in Prison

Six Somali men arrested off the coast of Somalia on January 12th are now sitting in prison in Spain after allegedly attacking the Atalanta Flagship, Patina. (Spain is currently leading Atalanta, having replaced Germany in December 2011).  The men say they are fishermen and that one of their group was killed by the Spanish military.

The charges they face include attempted piracy and disobeying a warship. No trial date has yet been set.

Meanwhile in Hamburg, Germany, the prosecution has rested its case and called for sentences ranging from seven to eleven years for the adult men on trial and  between four and five and a half years for the under-age defendants. The court case is set to continue until the end of March.

And in Belgium, the Brussels Court of Appeal upheld the sentence of ten years given in July last year against the one person on trial there. He had been arrested in November 2009 on the basis of DNA evidence held in the Interpol collection. The collection of DNA samples of suspected Somali "pirates" was officially established in mid-2010 after an anti-pirate conference in South Korea.

Many northern Hemisphere and western countries oppose the collection of DNA samples from their own  population, but allow their own navies and military to build databases of Somali people in Africa and their border agencies to build databases of refugees and people seeking asylum.