Alabama pirate faces life sentence

Alabama pirate faces life sentence    The lone Somalian pirate who survived an attempt to hijack the U.S. containership Maersk Alabama now faces a mandatory life sentence in prison.
   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.