High-seas piracy drama plays out in U.S. courtroom
Five Somalis accused of attacking a Navy ship await their fate in the first such trial in almost 200 years.
Reporting from Norfolk, Va. — The moon was bright, the sea was calm, and the pirates easily spotted their prey — a large gray ship plodding through waves 576 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia.
Three men jumped from a command boat into an open skiff and raced toward the target. They opened fire with AK-47 rifles as they neared the starboard side, hitting a mast and several life lines.
No one was hurt, and the April 1 incident normally might have drawn little notice. Somali sea bandits have attacked several hundred freighters, tankers and other merchant ships this year. They have successfully hijacked 40 vessels and their crews and held them for ransom.
But the target this time was the U.S. guided missile frigate Nicholas, disguised to resemble a cargo ship. Navy gunners fired back, and by dawn, commandos had captured five Somalis.
The result has been a riveting federal trial here this month. Navy officers gave a rare inside peek at counter-pirate operations, while the men accused of piracy testified emotionally — one appeared to weep on the stand — about their ordeals.
"It's a historic occasion," said Eugene Kontorovich, a maritime law expert at Northwestern University School of Law. "It's the first piracy trial in the United States in close to 200 years."
The five Somalis — scarecrow-thin men in their 20s who appeared even tinier in the baggy sport coats they wore to court — each faces 14 criminal charges and mandatory life in prison if convicted of piracy. The jury is expected to begin deliberations Monday.
Whatever the verdict, the trial has underscored the difficulties of combating Somali piracy in a U.S. court, especially if the men never boarded the ship. In a similar but separate case, another federal judge in Norfolk dismissed piracy charges against six other Somalis accused of firing at the U.S. Navy vessel Ashland, although they face other charges. Prosecutors are appealing.
The men captured by the Nicholas were flown to Norfolk, where the frigate is based, because authorities in Kenya, which agreed last year to prosecute pirates detained by foreign navies, refused to accept them. Days before the attack, Navy warships had released 11 other suspected Somali brigands after destroying their weapons.
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