WASHINGTON– Two Somali pirates were sentenced to three decades in prison over the kidnapping of an American journalist held in captivity for nearly 1,000 days, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced Abdi Yusuf Hassan and Mohamed Tahlil Mohamed were both given a 30-year prison sentence for capture of a hostage, terrorism and firearms offenses related to the kidnapping of American journalist Michael Scott Moore in Somalia.
Mohamed, 43, is from Mogadishu, Somalia. Hassan, 56, is a naturalized U.S. citizen of Minneapolis, Minn., who served as Somalia’s Minister of the Interior. They kept Moore for 977 days. In addition to a prison term, both were sentenced to one day of supervised release.
For nearly the three years Moore was held hostage by Somali pirates, he was “beaten, chained to the floor, and threatened with assault rifles and machine guns,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York said.
According to the Justice Department, Hassan and Mohamed were “key players” who played “significant roles” in the hostage-taking.
Hassan, a senior government official and Mohamed, an ex-Army officer, kept Moore in order to “satisfy their own greed,” says Williams.
A New York jury convicted the two of the related offenses in February 2023 following a three-week trial in a sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge Allyne R. Ross, who had presided over the trial.
The U.S. government contends Hassan’s government role as Interior Minister made him responsible for police and security forces in Somalia’s Galmudug province where Moore was allegedly being held in captivity.
Moore, then a 45-year-old U.S.-German dual citizen was kidnapped by an unspecified armed group in January 2012 while conducting research on piracy for a book on a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.
He is the author of Sweetness and Blood, a 2010 about the history of surfing, and The Desert and the Sea, his 2018 memoir about his captivity in Somalia.
He was driving in the Galkayo vicinity when his vehicle was “suddenly surrounded by a group of heavily armed men carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers,” officials say.
Hassan, the federal government claimed, served as “overall leader” of the group of Somali pirates to extort ransom money from Moore’s elderly mother. He also directed production of “proof-of-life” videos that Moore was forced to take part in to prove he was still alive.
Moore reportedly got pulled from his vehicle, beaten with weapons, and drove away in another vehicle to a secluded area where he was held with two Seychellois fishermen abducted in October 2011 off the Somali coast.
Meanwhile, Mohamed was a Somali Army officer and a supervisor of the group of pirates holding Moore who moved their hostage multiple times around the plagued nation on the East African continent. He was held in various locations in the vicinity of Hobyo, Somalia for roughly three months
He was held along with 26 Asian sailors later freed and returned home to their native Vietnam, Taiwan, Cambodia, Indonesia, China and the Philippines.
Moore was forced to witness things such as torture and had been under constant threat of bodily injury. The kidnappers provided Moore with next to no information. His only access to the outside world was limited to just a radio.
But in court proceedings, Moore reportedly requested the court be lenient when in Mohamed’s sentencing. “‘Gentle” was a word Moore supposedly used to describe Mohamed, according to Mohamed’s lawyer.
“Mr. Moore confirmed that Mr. Mohamed was kind to him throughout his ordeal,” Susan Kellman, an attorney for Mohamed, told The Hill in an email.
Following a random payment, Moore’s Somali captors did release him in September 2014. The effort to obtain Williams’ release was an interagency government effort between the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI and its various branches.
Source: UPI
