Fuck it, just hang him

Rico says they're trying to get the guy off because he's a juvenile; too bad. Sharon Otterman of The New York Times has the whole story:

A Somali teenager is due to appear in a New York courtroom on Tuesday for arraignment on charges that he was one of a group of pirates who hijacked a United States-flagged cargo ship and held its American captain hostage for days in a lifeboat on the Indian Ocean. The suspected pirate, who has been identified in press reports as Abduhl Wali-i-Musi, arrived in New York late Monday to face what are believed to be the first piracy charges in the United States in more than a century. Surrounded by federal guards and television cameras, the thin young man smiled but said nothing as he was led into a federal building in a driving rainstorm Monday night. He was handcuffed with a chain around his waist, and was clad in a blue jumpsuit, with one hand wrapped in thick white bandages.
The American crew of the cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, said he was injured when they captured him during the attempted hijacking on 8 April. He is the sole Somali survivor of the incident; he had surrendered and was aboard a Naval destroyer when sharpshooters killed the three pirates holding the captain, Richard Phillips, on the lifeboat.
Mr. Musi’s case has been assigned to a federal magistrate judge, Andrew Peck, who was expected to hold a hearing in the case sometime Tuesday afternoon. “We are expecting this to be a very long trial proceeding,” said Omar Jamal, the director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, which helps Somali immigrants with legal and social issues. “How long has it been since the United States tried a pirate? They must dig through the books for precedents.” Mr. Jamal said he had been asked by the accused man’s family to assist with the legal case and that he spoke with the family Monday night. During the conversation, the accused pirate’s mother said he was just sixteen, and was lured into piracy by older men with the promise of money. “I appeal to President Obama to pardon my teenager,” the mother, Adar Abdirahman Hassan, said by telephone from her home in Galkayo, Somalia. “I request him to release my son or at least allow me to see him and be with him during the trial.” The accused pirate’s father, Abdiqadir Muse, said the family is penniless and that the pirates lied to his son, telling him they were going to get money. The center gave a somewhat different rendering of the suspected pirate’s name: Abdiwali Abdirizaq Muse.
His age will be one of the matters at issue as court proceedings unfold in the coming weeks, Mr. Jamal and other lawyers said. American officials have asserted in media reports that the accused pirate is at least eighteen, which would mean prosecutors will not have to take extra legal steps to try him as an adult in a United States court.
Other issues make the case murky under the federal statute that deals with piracy— 18 U.S. Code Section 1653, which was last updated in 1948— according to the New York defense attorney Ronald Kuby, who said he was called by Mr. Jamal for assistance with the case. “How did he come into American custody?” Mr. Kuby asked. “There are conflicting reports. Did he come on to the Bainbridge”, the Navy destroyer on the scene during the standoff, “to seek medical attention, or come under a flag of truce?” In either case, he said, holding the suspected pirate would be a violation of the principle of neutrality. The larger issues surrounding piracy near Somalia, which has not had a functioning government since 1991, might also play a role, because the piracy statute speaks about treaties between nations. A more clear-cut case, Mr. Kuby said, would be to try the young Somali under the federal statue for hostage taking.
A criminal trial would be historic and potentially useful approach to a longstanding problem, other maritime law experts said, noting that piracy in the waters off Somalia has become a growing concern, and that diplomatic and military approaches have yet to tame it. New York is a logical site for the trial because the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan has developed great expertise in trying crimes that occur outside the United States, including cases in Africa involving terrorism against Americans, such as the al-Qaeda bombings of two embassies in East Africa in 1998.
Under international law, any country can prosecute acts of piracy committed in international waters but, in practice, not all nations have incorporated anti-piracy statutes into their domestic legislation, said Roger Middleton, an expert on piracy at Chatham House, a research organization based in London.
Warships patrolling the pirate-infested waters off the coast of Somalia under NATO auspices in have not always been holding the suspected pirates they catch. On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Washington that releasing pirates “sends the wrong signal”, and the alliance must discuss ways that they can be brought to justice. “There isn’t a consistent approach across the world, and you aren’t guaranteed to be prosecuted if you are picked up as a pirate,” Mr. Middleton said.

Rico says there's no need to prosecute if you don't take them alive; now that he's here, they'll have to show how a sixteen-year-old, acting as an adult, can be tried as one. Shouldn't be too hard...