


The convicted is a 56 year old, Qhardo-born, former unemployed NGO-turned-ransom negotiating ace, He is not actually a pirate in the classic sense but rather an land based interpreter who worked with a number of pirates, shipowners and security companies to negotiate ransoms and the release of ships and crew. shores to face charges," Mohammed Saalil Shibin's capture and conviction says more about the US understanding of piracy than its ability to shut it down via legal or military intimidation. Billed as "the highest-ranking pirate ever brought to U.S. The film “Captain Phillips” was nominated for six Academy Awards, including best picture, and Somali-American actor Barkhad Abdi, who played Abduwali Muse in the film, was nominated for best supporting actor.The US government is strutting and crowing about another lifetime conviction for a pirate. Navy SEAL snipers killed the three remaining armed pirates.

naval vessel USS Bainbridge to negotiate on behalf of the other hijackers. Later, Muse was allowed to come aboard the U.S. However, the pirates forced Phillips into the boat and continued to hold him hostage.
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Phillips offered the pirates money to leave the ship and showed them how to escape in a lifeboat. A crew member who’d escaped capture by the pirates managed to stab Muse with a knife, and the other crew members took him as a hostage to exchange for Phillips. Office of Naval Intelligence reported no vessels had been hijacked that year piracy has not recurred since.ĭuring the Maersk Alabama hostage taking, which lasted four days, Abdiweli Muse was one of four young men who boarded the cargo ship and demanded ransom. Since 2010, Somali authorities and international governments have implemented a wide array of anti-piracy measures in the region, rapidly reducing pirate attacks off the Horn of Africa. The Taiwanese boat’s owners paid the pirates’ ransom demand to release the crew, but three of the 30 crew members died of malnutrition while in captivity. The boat the pirates used to attack the Maersk Alabama was a Taiwanese fishing vessel that had been hijacked by pirates near the Seychelles, also not within Somali territorial waters. flag, not a fishing trawler, and it was carrying mostly humanitarian aid bound for the Kenyan port of Mombasa. It was obviously a cargo ship flying a U.S. In fact, the Maersk Alabama was attacked in international waters, 240 nautical miles (440 km) from the coast of Somalia. In any case, Abdulkadir told a New York court that he was 18 before pleading guilty to hijacking, kidnapping and hostage taking.īut the bigger distortion is the characterization of the Maersk Alabama hijacking as a legitimate response to illegal fishing and dumping in Somali waters. His mother and father gave different years for his birth - 19, respectively. Federal Bureau of Prisons lists his age as 31, which would have made him about 19 at the time of the hijacking. authorities claimed Muse gave them several different ages at different times, but the U.S.
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(His full name is Abdiweli Abdulkadir Muse.) There is conflicting information about Abdiweli Abdulkadir’s age. The portrayal of the ship’s hijackers as “defending” Somali waters is false. “When Abdiweli was arrested in 2009, his face was plastered on television like he was some sort of big criminal when in reality he was just a 16-year-old kid from the Somali coast that was forced to take up arms after his livelihood was destroyed due to illegal Foreign fishing.”Īlthough poverty, illegal fishing and toxic waste dumping in Somali waters are real issues, they had little to do with the Maersk Alabama incident. His only crime was taking up arms and defending his seas from Foreign vessels and trawlers looting Somali waters.” He was just 16 and vilified in the press as a pirate. “Never forget the story of Abdiweli Abdulkadir. Phillips’ saga was made into a 2013 movie, “ Captain Phillips,” starring actor Tom Hanks.

court and sentenced to 33 years in prison. The Halgan Media thread focuses on one of the surviving hijackers, Abdiweli Abdulkadir, who was tried in a U.S. The ship’s captain, Richard Phillips, was held hostage in a lifeboat before being rescued by the U.S. On April 29, Halgan Media, which describes itself as “providing in-depth coverage on the Somali Peninsula,” posted a thread on Twitter marking 11 years since the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama cargo ship off the coast of Somalia in 2009.
