NEW YORK — A Somali pirate who kidnapped and brutalized the captain of a U.S.-flagged merchant ship off the coast of Africa in 2009 was sentenced to more than 33 years in prison Wednesday by an emotional judge who told him he deserved a stiff punishment for leading a crew of armed bandits bent on committing “depraved acts.”
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska choked up as she read at length from letters written by Capt. Richard Phillips and traumatized sailors who were aboard the cargo vessel commandeered by Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse.
The recent spate of piracy on the Indian Ocean and elsewhere “is not a Disneyland-esque problem,” she quoted Phillips, of Underhill, Vt., as saying. “These are not Johnny Depps. They threaten seamen’s lives, repeatedly. . . . They deprive us of the rights that they themselves complain about.”
Another officer from the ship, Colin Wright, appeared in person to urge the judge to impose a lengthy sentence. He recalled being shot at and held at gunpoint by Muse and three other pirates.
“What happened to us was terrible,” said Wright, 44, of Galves ton, Texas. “I’m not the same person I was, and I never will be.”
Muse pleaded guilty last year to hijacking, kidnapping and hostage-taking charges. Before he was sentenced, he apologized to the victims, claiming he was a desperate, small-time player in a Somali piracy syndicate that has collected millions of dollars in ransoms.
“I’m very sorry for what I did,” he said through an interpreter. “I got my hands into something that was more powerful than me.”
Preska imposed the maximum sentence of 33 years, nine months. She noted that prosecutors had described the pirates as experienced, coordinated and sadistic — even playing Russian roulette with their hostages — during the five-day siege of the Maersk Alabama.
The vessel was boarded by the pirates as it transported humanitarian supplies about 280 miles off the coast of Somalia, an impoverished East African nation of about 10 million people.
Muse was the first to board the 500-foot ship, firing his AK-47 assault rifle at the captain, prosecutors said. He ordered Phillips to halt the vessel and then held him hostage on a sweltering, enclosed lifeboat that was soon shadowed by three U.S. warships and a helicopter.
The pirate beat and taunted Phillips by holding a gun to his head, pulling the trigger and laughing when it didn’t go off, court papers said.
The siege ended when Navy sharpshooters on the USS Bainbridge picked off three of the four pirates in a stunning nighttime operation, leaving Phillips untouched. Muse had left the lifeboat less than an hour earlier and was the only pirate to survive.
