http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=34648
“Terrorists and Pirates: An Alliance of Convenience”
By: Ryan Mauro
Friday, May 01, 2009
SNIPPET: “While the relationship is based on business and not ideology, it doesn’t make it any less beneficial to al-Shabaab. He says that they sometimes receive a “protection fee of 5 to 10 percent of the ransom money. If al-Shabab helps to train the pirates, it might receive 20 percent and up to 50 percent if it finances the piracy operation.””
http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=34660
“The Legal Left Comes to Pirate’s Defense”
By: John Perazzo
Friday, May 01, 2009
SNIPPET: “In the aftermath of the recent hijacking of the U.S. ship Maersk Alabama by four Somali pirates—a crisis that ended with three dead pirates and a fourth in American custody—the lone pirate survivor, Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, is set to face justice. That is, unless the legal Left, led by so-called “civil rights” attorney Ron Kuby, succeeds in blaming the United States for the attack on its own ship.
Kuby already has deployed the tactic that has been the defining emblem of his professional career—portraying a morally bankrupt defendant as a victim whose actions were compelled by a set of unfortunate external circumstances, and essentially condemning the United States for attempting to prosecute an individual who committed a grave and potentially deadly offense against American interests.
There are clear indications that as this case unfolds during the coming weeks, Kuby and his cohorts will put the respective crews of the Maersk Alabama and the USS Bainbridge (the Navy ship that came to aid the Maersk) on trial instead of the hijacker, second-guessing every action taken by the ship commanders and by the U.S. Navy SEALS who ultimately brought the crisis to a close.
The charges facing Muse are serious indeed: piracy; conspiracy to seize a ship by force; discharging a firearm in a conspiracy to seize a ship; conspiracy to commit hostage taking; and brandishing a firearm during a conspiracy to commit hostage taking. U.S. law plainly dictates that “whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life.”
In an effort to evade such an unhappy prospect, Muse’s mother first asked President Obama to pardon her son, depicting him as nothing more than a confused youngster who had been recruited into piracy by a coterie of persuasive “gangsters with money.” The father echoed her story, explaining that his boy had never previously hijacked a ship in the Indian Ocean.
Next, the parents sought to secure legal representation for their pirate son. Toward that end, they contacted Omar Jamal, executive director of the Minneapolis-based Somali Justice Advocacy Center. Jamal is a sort of “Somali Al Sharpton,” having made a career out of depicting his constituency – fellow Somalis living in the U.S. – as victims of American injustice and bigotry.”