NEW YORK: A Somali teenager arrived to face the first piracy charges in the United States in more than a century, smiling but saying nothing as he was led into a federal building under heavy guard.
Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, the sole surviving Somali pirate from the hostage-taking of an American ship captain, is to appear in a courtroom on piracy and hostage-taking charges.
Handcuffed with a chain wrapped around his waist and about a dozen federal agents surrounding him, the lean teen passed through the glare of dozens of news cameras in a drenching rainstorm. His left hand was heavily bandaged from the wound he suffered during the skirmish on the cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama.
A law enforcement official familiar with the case said Muse was being charged under two obscure federal laws that deal with piracy and hostage-taking.
The teenager was flown from Africa to a New York airport on the same day that his mother appealed to President Barack Obama for his release. She said her son was coaxed into piracy by “gangsters with money.” “I appeal to President Obama to pardon and release my son or at least allow me to see him and be with him during the trial,” Adar Abdirahman Hassan, 40, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from her home in Galkayo town in Somalia.
The boy’s father, Abdiqadir Muse, said the pirates lied to his son, telling him they were going to get money. The family is penniless, he said.
“He just went with them without knowing what he was getting into,” Muse said in a separate telephone interview through an interpreter.
He also said it was his son’s first outing with the pirates after having been taken from his home about a week and a half before he surrendered at sea to US officials.
Muse’s personal details are murky, with his parents in Somalia insisting he was tricked into getting involved in piracy. His age also remained unclear. His parents said he is only 16, but US law enforcement said he is at least 18, meaning prosecutors will not have to take extra legal steps to try him in a US court.
Muse’s mother said she has no records to prove his age, but she and the teen’s father say he is 16. “I never delivered my babies in a hospital,” she said.
A classmate, however, said he believed Muse could be older and that he studied English at school.
“I think he was one or two years older than me, and I am 16,” said Abdisalan Muse, reached by telephone in Galkayo. “We did not know him to be a pirate, but he was always with older boys, who are likely to be the ones who corrupted him.” It is rare for Somalis to have formal birth records, and US officials did not say on what basis they believe him to be 18 or older.
It is extraordinarily rare for the federal government to try a teenager with crimes, and the dispute over the defendant’s age could present a challenge to prosecutors.
