When is a pirate not a pirate?A US federal court may provide an answer in a trial that opened in Washington DC this past week of a Somali official who helped win release of a hijacked Danish cargo ship and crew for $US1.7 million ($A1.80 million) ransom, but who played no part in seizing the vessel or holding it for 71 days.
US courts have convicted dozens of Somali pirates in recent years, part of a vast multinational effort that has helped curtail the rampant hijacking of oil tankers, freighters, sailboats and other ships off the Horn of Africa.
But the federal judge in the latest trial says the Justice Department went too far by charging Ali Mohamed Ali with piracy, which carries a mandatory life sentence.
| The federal judge, of course, has never had his life disrupted by piracy, terrorists or renegades... |
In April 2011, Ali was acting director of the Education Ministry in Somaliland, a semi-autonomous region in northern Somalia, when US authorities lured him to American soil by inviting him to an education conference. He was arrested when his flight landed at Dulles International Airport outside Washington.
| If he hadn't fallen for that they would have lured him by telling him that he'd won Super Bowl tickets. That works every time... |
In a later hearing, Huvelle scolded the prosecutors for pursuing the piracy charge, calling it “government overreaching”.
| Which the government frequently does, but let's hear the evidence... |
Legal experts say the prosecution is unusual because Ali acted as an intermediary and translator, not as an armed pirate.
“None of this is to say that he’s a perfectly lovely guy, but it’s a very, very odd and ambitious prosecution,” said Tara Helfman, a law professor at Syracuse University who has followed the case.
| Who also has never been terrorized... |
Federal prosecutors argued in opening statements Monday that even though Ali didnÂ’t seize the CEC Future or carry a weapon, he was key to the piratesÂ’ scheme to secure a ransom.
“He was the most important gun on board,” said Julieanne Himelstein, an assistant US attorney. “Because that was the gun that got them the money.”
Over the last five years, a coalition of more than 60 countries and organisations has increased naval patrols in the Indian Ocean, conducted airstrikes against pirate dens on land and jailed more than 1100 suspected hijackers. To crack down further, US authorities arenÂ’t just chasing the pirates, who are mostly impoverished young fishermen. Officials increasingly target the transnational network of crime bosses, human traffickers, money launderers and others who bankroll the pirate trade and grab most of the profits.
| Sorta like going after the mob's financiers, or the money men for the big drug cartels. You do it because it works. |
“Those who negotiate and collect these ransoms are every bit as responsible for these crimes as the pirates who commandeer the ships.”
Last year, a federal judge in Norfolk, Virginia, sentenced a Somali man, Mohammad Saaili Shibin, to 12 life sentences for negotiating ransoms for two hijacked ships, including a yacht owned by a Californian couple. The two couples aboard the yacht, all Americans, were killed by pirates in February 2011. Justice Department officials called Shibin the highest-ranking pirate ever brought to the United States.
Lawyers for Ali, a thin, bespectacled man in his early 50s who wore an argyle sweater to court, described him in far different terms. According to defence lawyer Matthew Peed, Ali came to the United States in 1981 as a 19-year-old student of management economics at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. He later settled in the Washington area and offered his Somali and Arabic language skills to Department of Homeland Security officials after the September 11 attacks in 2001, but returned to Somaliland in 2007 for family reasons, Peed said.
Ali was brought aboard the CEC Future as a negotiator
| ...by who? That would answer a fair number of questions right there. If the insurance company brought him in because he knew the lay of the land, that's one thing, but if he was suggested by the pirates or their bag-men, then he's an accessory. |
AliÂ’s lawyers say the extra money was for the hijackersÂ’ bosses on land, not for him.
In addition to piracy, Ali is charged with aiding and abetting pirates, conspiracy to commit piracy and hostage-taking, all of which carry heavy prison sentences. His trial is expected to last several weeks.