Bartamaha (Washington):- The trial of five Somalis accused of attacking the heavily armed USS Nicholas from a small skiff in the Indian Ocean will last about three weeks, one of their lawyers said Thursday.

Proceedings in what is believed to be the first piracy trial in the United States in more than a century began on Wednesday at a court in Norfolk, Virginia.

The charges against the five young Somalis include piracy, attacking “to plunder” a maritime vessel, and assault with a dangerous weapon.

David Bouchard, lawyer for three of the defendants, dismisses the prosecution’s allegation that the men confessed when first apprehended to trying to seize the frigate for a ransom of up to 40,000 dollars.

“We didn’t make a confession,” Bouchard told AFP. “We maintain they were actually kidnapped by pirates and caught in the middle of this process.”

The five men were indicted back in April for attacking the USS Nicholas, a guided missile frigate, on March 31 in a brazen attempt to rob the ship from their small skiff.

Two of the defendants, Gabul Abdullah Ali and Abdi Wali Dire, “opened fire with their assault firearms on what they believed to be a merchant ship,” the charge sheet said.

The five were apprehended when the USS Nicholas returned fire and quickly chased down their small boat and a mothership.

Bouchard said his defendants were in fact fishermen forced into attacking the frigate after being taken at gunpoint. He said they had actually sought rescue when they saw what kind of vessel they were faced with.

“They realized that it was not a tanker. They did not see anyone on board, so they tried to get attention and fired shots into the air, the Navy thought they were firing at them,” Bouchard said.

“They were ordered to attack the boat, they were used as pawns which is apparently very common there. This is more like a Marx Brothers movie, a comedy which turned tragic.”

Bouchard said the Navy and the Department of Justice were “totally overreacting” in their quest to make someone pay for the rampant piracy off the Horn of Africa.

“They do it to make an example, but no one in Somalia is going to know,” he told AFP.

Warships now patrol the Indian Ocean after a series of spectacular hijackings in the Gulf of Aden propelled Somali piracy to the forefront of international attention in late 2008 and early 2009.

In the space of a few months, pirates seized a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks and arms to Kenya, a Saudi oil tanker, and several UN ships carrying international aid supplies.

Armed with AK-47s, GPS navigation and satellite phones, pirates raked in an estimated 60 million dollars in ransoms last year.

They are often detained but then let go days later by foreign navies patrolling the region as successful prosecutions are extremely rare.

Kenya, south of the pirates homeland in Somalia, is no longer willing to take custody of pirate suspects. A Kenyan court this week released nine Somalis accused of piracy, saying it had no jurisdiction in the case.

Somali pirates are currently holding 20 ships and more than 400 sailors and passengers, according to the International Maritime Organization.

Legal experts say the ongoing trial in Norfolk, home port of the Nicholas and the location for the largest naval base in the world, is the first in the United States in more than a century.

Another Somali man pleaded guilty in May in New York to seizing a ship but that case did not go to trial and prosecutors dropped the charge of piracy, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

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Source:- AFP.

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