8/4/2013 News Flash Follow Up. Jury Recommends Life for Somali Pirates

AN AMERICAN JURY HAS RECOMMENDED LIFE IN PRISON FOR THREE SOMALI PIRATES CONVICTED OF PIRACY AND MURDER OF AMERICAN CITIZENS.

source: Tyson Weinert, USCG (pub­lic domain)

Story By AP: NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — A jury recommended Friday that three Somali pirates be sentenced to life in prison in the slayings of four Americans aboard a yacht off the coast of Africa.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, and 22 of the 26 crimes they were convicted of were death-eligible offenses. But a federal jury in Norfolk, Va., recommended the only other possible sentence for 20-year-old Ahmed Muse Salad, 25-year-old Abukar Osman Beyle and 29-year-old Shani Nurani Shiekh Abrar.

During the sentencing phase of the trial, defense attorneys attempted to raise doubts about the certainty of the crimes the jury had convicted them of. Salad attorney Claire Cardwell noted that nobody was able to definitively say which person shot which victim, and that much of the evidence presented relied on testimony of other convicted pirates. If the jury and the government wanted to dole out justice by taking an eye for an eye, "Which eye, for which eye?" she asked."

Full story:http://news.yahoo.com/jury-recommends-life-sentences-somali-pirates-185818762.html

EDITORIAL NOTE: 11 Other members of the same pirate crew had been tried previously and all received life sentences

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