Spring Break
Pirate comes to NY, world away from home in Africa
Associated Press
Issue date: 4/22/09 Section: News
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For entertainment, he would frequent a run-down outdoor cinema and watch Bollywood movies in a town with no running water or electricity. He eventually joined up with a gang of pirates who laid siege to an American cargo ship and took the captain hostage. The standoff ended last week with three of the pirates killed by U.S. Navy snipers. Muse survived but was stabbed in the hand with an ice pick.
On Tuesday, the teenager found himself a world away from the dusty tenements and pirate ships of Somalia, appearing in a packed federal courtroom in New York on what are believed to be the first piracy charges in the U.S. in more than a century.
The 5-foot-2 Muse looked bewildered and so scrawny that his prison clothes were several sizes too big. He had a frayed white bandage where he was stabbed.
When his court-appointed lawyer said Muse's father would be interviewed in Somalia to verify his birthdate, Muse put his head in his hand and broke down in tears. When the judge asked him if he understood that court-appointed lawyers would represent him, the teenager responded through a translator: "I understand. I don't have any money." When he was asked to raise his right hand, he pointed it into the air as if he was being called on in class.
The decision by the federal government to bring Muse to justice here has thrust the skinny teenager into the international spotlight, and raised legal questions about whether the U.S. is going too far in trying to make an example of someone so young.
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