A US court on Monday handed life sentences to two Somali men
for a hijacking off Oman that ended in the deaths of four American sailors. The
sentences given to Ali Abdi Mohamed and Burhan
Abdirahman Yusuf were the first delivered over the February hijacking of the
S/V Quest. A further 11 men await sentencing, three of whom have been charged
with murder over the attack.The boat’s owners and two guests were shot dead
before
American naval commandos could rescue them. The pirates were in negotiations
with the US military when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired from the yacht
at the guided-missile destroyer USS Sterett. The pirates killed their hostages
as troops boarded the
yacht, the US military said. Two pirates were also shot dead. The sentences
?will be heard throughout the pirate community and should send a clear message? that the days of unbridled armed robbery and
extortion at sea are over,? Janice Fedarcyk, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI?s
New York field office, was quoted as saying by newswire AFP.Somali pirates have
attacked two ships in Oman this week,
hijacking one chemical tanker anchored in port and taking the ship and 21
Indian crew back to Somalian waters. Oman lies at the mouth of the Gulf, a
strategic, heavily
patrolled waterway which channels a bulk of the world’s crude shipments.Somali
pirates behind similar vessel hijackings usually
operate in Indian Ocean waters, but in January, a 20,586-tonne Algerian-flagged
bulk carrier was seized about 150 miles southeast of Salalah.Several oil tankers
have also been attacked in the
pirate-infested Gulf of Aden, with their valuable cargoes being used by pirates
to demand ransoms.Somalia has lacked a functioning government for two decades.
The United Nations last month declared a famine in Somalia and said that 3.7
million people were in need of food assistance.
