Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse was charged in U.S. Magistrate Court in New York and ordered detained. He was charged with piracy under the law of nations, which carries a mandatory term of life imprisonment, as well as three other crimes that carry potential life terms: discharging a firearm, and aiding and abetting the discharge of a firearm, during and in relation to the conspiracy to seize a ship by force; conspiracy to commit hostage taking; and brandishing a firearm, and aiding and abetting the brandishing of a firearm, during and in relation to the conspiracy to commit hostage taking.
Muse also has been charged with conspiracy to seize a ship by force, which could result in a 20-year prison term.
The three other pirates who boarded the Maersk Alabama with Muse on April 8 were killed four days later by U.S. Navy snipers while Muse was being treated on a U.S. destroyer for a hand wound he incurred as crewmembers of the Maersk Alabama drove the pirates from the ship.
New York’s tabloid newspapers were having a field day with the novelty of a pirate being put on trial in Manhattan. The New York Daily News said the most recent New York piracy trial it could find was from 1861 when a hung jury could not decide if seamen who seized a brig Joseph and brought it into Charleston as a prize were pirates or privateers.
The New York Post dubbed him the “Bawling Brigand” after he cried in court, where columnist Andrea Peyser thought he cut a less than fearsome image. “He looked more like an urchin seeking adoption by Madonna than a swashbuckling Somali pirate seeking an American fortune,” she wrote.
