MANHATTAN (CN) - A federal judge tearfully read victims letters on Wednesday before sentencing Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse to 405 months in a federal prison, the maximum penalty the law allowed, for leading the April 8, 2009, hijackings of the Maersk Alabama container ship in the Indian Ocean.
Muse was the sole survivor of the four-member Somali pirate crew that attacked a U.S. cargo ship and abducted its captain. Remarkably youthful and underweight in appearance, Muse, who is thought to be in his late teens, appeared contrite during the sentencing hearing.
He pleaded guilty in May two counts each of hijacking, kidnapping and hostage taking.
Prosecutors said Muse was the leader of the pirates and among the first to storm the Maersk Alabama after shooting at the container ship from their boat. Once Muse boarded the ship, a crew member lunged out of hiding to tackle and subdue him.
The rest of the pirates took the ship's captain, Richard Phillips, hostage for four days, after offering to leave the Maersk in exchange for a lifeboat and Muse, who was briefly held in the ship's safe room with his hands bound by wire.
Prosecutors said Muse distributed $30,000 in cash taken from the Maersk to the other pirates on the lifeboat. The U.S. Navy took Muse into custody when Muse thought he was negotiating the release of the captain, as SEALs killed the other pirates and rescued Capt. Phillips.
"I am sorry very much about what happened to the victims who were in the ship," said Muse, dressed in a green long-sleeved shirt and khaki pants at the sentencing hearing. "I ask for forgiveness to all the people who I harmed and to the U.S. government."
Colin Wright, one of Muse's victims, advocated for more than 700 merchant marines still in captivity off the coast of Somalia and blasted the ship's captain for steering the crew into pirate-infested waters.
Wright, a third officer aboard the Maersk, said that Muse and his companions kept his shipmates locked in a 130 to 140 degree room near the equator, and they were barely able to walk when the were released."
Muse's prison term, which spans more than 33 years, ensures that when he is released from prison, he will be older than the average life expectancy of a Somali man, Muse's federal defender Fiona Doherty said. She added that there will be "no chance" that his parents, still living in Somalia, will be alive when he gets out.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, moved to tears by the letters of the hijacking's victims, said that she grounded her top-line sentence on the "extreme level of violence and sadism" that Muse showed aboard one of the ships.
"He relished in the suffering of his victims," Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan Robert McGuire said.
Although Muse was very thin, one of his victims said in an interview following the sentencing that he appeared to have "gained weight."
Neither the federal judge nor the prosecutor was moved by Doherty's remarks about Muse's upbringing amid crushing poverty, drought, hunger and government-sanctioned criminality pervasive in Somalia.