Friday, April 24, 2009

Why New York Is No Place to Try Somali Pirates

The reason Abdulwali Muse will stand trial in New York’s Southern District Court, we are told, is that the court has a lot of experience in trying those who have attacked U.S. targets abroad. The 19-year-old Somali is accused of being the ringleader of a group of pirates who seized the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama cargo ship in the waters off East Africa, before a dramatic U.S. military rescue operation. Unlike previous pirate suspects who have been handed over for trial in Kenya, Muse was brought to New York on Monday night and is expected to be arraigned in Manhattan soon. But even if the young Somali broke the law and kidnapped Americans, putting him on trial in New York will do nothing to stamp out the piracy that is plaguing the Somali coastline. If anything, it will turn Muse into a martyr, prompting an escalation of violence on the high seas by his peers, who will rally more Somalis to their cause (which is already pretty popular in the long-suffering nation), and jeopardize U.S. national-security interests in East Africa.

Source: News Inventory

No comments:

Post a Comment