NORFOLK, Va. — Five Somali men accused of attacking a U.S. Navy ship off Africa’s coast were convicted on federal piracy charges Wednesday, in what experts said was the first trial of its kind since the Civil War.
The verdict was handed down by a jury in U.S. District Court in Norfolk. The five men, who wore earphones, stood silently as the verdict was read to them by an interpreter. They face mandatory life terms at a sentencing hearing set for March 14 in Norfolk.
“They were just sad,” David Bouchard, who defended one of the five men, Abdi Wali Dire, said of the men’s reaction to the verdict.
Defense lawyers had argued the men were innocent fishermen who had been abducted by pirates and forced to fire weapons at the ship.
But federal prosecutors argued during trial that the five had confessed to attacking the USS Nicholas on April 1 after mistaking it for a merchant ship. The Nicholas, based in Norfolk, was part of an international flotilla fighting piracy in the seas off Somalia.
John S. Davis, an assistant U.S. attorney, had argued that three of the men were in a skiff that opened fire on the Nicholas with assault rifles.
The Associated Press
