12  theSun | THURSDAY APRIL 23 2009

news without borders

Teen Somali pirate suspect to be tried as adult

NEW YORK: A Somali teenager accused of hold-
ing hostage a US ship captain in the Indian Ocean
after an attempted hijacking will be tried as an
adult in New York on piracy charges, a US judge
ruled on Tuesday. Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse,
the sole surviving accused pirate from the foiled
bid to hijack huge US container ship the Maersk
Alabama earlier this month, was put in custody
until his next court appearance on May 21.
Muse, who prosecutors said “conducted
himself as the leader of the pirates,” is charged
with piracy, conspiracy to seize a ship by force,
conspiracy to commit hostage taking and related
firearms offences. He faces a maximum sen-
tence of life in prison if convicted. The captain of
the Maersk Alabama, Richard Phillips, was held
hostage on a lifeboat for several days after he
volunteered to go with the pirates in exchange
for the crew. He was rescued when US Navy
snipers killed three pirates and captured Muse.
Muse appeared at a hearing in Manhattan
federal court after being brought to New York by
US authorities late on Monday. “An act of piracy
against one nation is a crime against all nations,”
Acting US Attorney Lev Dassin said in a statement.
“Pirates target ships and cargo, but threaten inter-
national commerce and human life.”
Muse who was the first to board the ship,
took the lead in issuing demands and said he had
hijacked other ships, according to the complaint.
Parts of the hearing were closed to the public
due to questions about whether Muse was less
than 18 years old.
Defence attorney Philip Weinstein said he
spoke to Muse’s father in Somalia, who said his
son is 15 years old but prosecutors said Muse
told the FBI he was 18. US Magistrate Judge
Andrew Peck eventually ruled Muse is 18 years
old. Speaking to reporters, Deirdre von Dornum,
one of Muse’s lawyers, said the legal team was
investigating the possibility Muse may have been
“kidnapped and taken hostage.” – Reuters

100,000 escape rebel zone

TWO TIGER LEADERS SURRENDER AS SRI LANKAN TROOPS ADVANCE
COLOMBO: Thousands more civilians
surged out of Sri Lanka’s war zone yes-
terday, while soldiers and Tamil Tiger
No rebels fought the apparent endgame of
Asia’s longest-running war despite calls
stopping to protect those still trapped.
ANC In the third day since troops blasted
pg 14 through a massive earthen wall built by
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) and unleashed the exodus, the
military said at least 100,000 people had
been registered for onward transit to
refugee camps.
Among those who came out was the
LTTE’s former spokesman Daya Master,
a former schoolteacher who was the Ti-
gers’ voice to the English-speaking world
for years and arranged media visits to
the self-declared state the separatists had
fought to create.
The military said he was the most
senior rebel to surrender, an act that is
in contravention of LTTE founder-leader
Vellupillai Prabhakaran’s dictate that fol-
lowers wear cyanide vials to be taken in
case of capture.
He surrendered along with the trans-
lator for the late LTTE political head S.P.
Thamilselvan as troops thrust deeper
into a former army-declared no-fire zone
that is now the last battleground in a war
that erupted in 1983.
The military says troops now control
all but 13sq km of the Indian Ocean
island, where the remnants of the LTTE
and Prabhakaran are fighting a final
stand in their war to create a separate
state for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority.
“Confrontations are taking place.
Whenever we come across LTTE cadres,
we are fighting them. The rescue opera-
tion is continuing,” military spokesman
Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.
The number of people who have fled
this year is now around 173,439 accord-
ing to the military tally.
The United Nations confirmed this
week’s outflow.
“It is 60,000 plus and counting, and
we have heard various reports of up to
110,000 coming out,” said the UN spokes-
man in Colombo, Gordon Weiss.
The LTTE has accused the military of
fabricating the numbers and of capturing
people it says are staying by choice. It has
ignored all calls to free civilians while
urging a truce, and on Tuesday vowed no
surrender despite facing overwhelming
firepower.
Dashing the LTTE’s hope India would
step in to help a group it trained in the
1980s, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab
Mukherjeeyesterday told reporters: “We
have no sympathy for the terrorists,
but every sympathy for the civilians.”
– Reuters

South Africans vote in briefs

toughest test for ANC
JOHANNESBURG: South Africans
voted yesterday in an election
that poses the toughest challenge
to the African National Congress
since the end of apartheid and
could weaken its overwhelming
dominance in parliament.
The ANC looks assured of a
fourth straight win since defeating
white minority rule in 1994 under
Nelson Mandela and will make its
leader Jacob Zuma president weeks
after he was able to get corruption
charges dropped on a technicality.
But the party faces an unprec-
edented challenge from opposi-
tion parties hoping to capitalise
on frustration over corruption,
poverty and crime, and could lose
the two-thirds majority that gives it
the right to change the constitution
and entrench its power further.
“We are entering a post-libera-
tion era. People are talking about
new issues and challenges and
there’s also a new generation
that’s not attached to the libera-
tion struggle,” independent politi-
cal analyst David Monyae said.
Queues snaked before dawn
outside polling stations across
South Africa, the continent’s
biggest economy and diplomatic
heavyweight.
The electoral body hopes voter
turnout will top 80%, compared
with 77% in 2004. Voting papers
were running short in some areas.
A key challenge to the ANC
comes from a new party formed
by those loyal to former president
Thabo Mbeki, ousted by the ANC
amid allegations he meddled in
the corruption case against Zuma,
which was dropped this month.
Voters in Johannesburg
queue to cast their votes
yesterday.
The first credible black oppo-
sition party, the Congress of the
People (Cope), has some support
among the growing black middle
class, but has struggled to win
over the poor.
The official opposition Demo-
EPAPIC
cratic Alliance, resurgent under
new leader Helen Zille, a white
South African, also hopes to boost
its presence in parliament and has
campaigned under a “Stop Zuma”
slogan, with an anti-corruption
message. – Reuters
Freddie Mac acting
CFO found dead: Police
WASHINGTON: David Kellermann,
acting chief financial officer of trou-
bled US mortgage giant Freddie Mac,
was found dead yesterday in his home
after apparently committing suicide, a
local police source said.
Kellermann, 41, was named acting
CFO last September after the Treasury
Department seized the company, and
its sibling mortgage agency Fannie
Mae, as the agencies faced deep losses
on a crashing US housing market.
A police source said the 16-year
veteran of Freddie Mac was found
hanging in the basement of his home
in Reston, outside Washington.
Kellermann had been closely involved
in many key accounting and financial
issues since 2003 when regulators
found that Freddie Mac had improperly
booked years of losses. – AFP
Egyptian held on
suspicion of killing
wife over cooking
CAIRO: An Egyptian man has been
arrested on suspicion of beating
his wife to death because she
had cooked him the wrong meal,
the state-run Mena news agency
reported on Tuesday.
Police suspect that the 37-year-
old from the Nile Delta province
of Sharqiya punched his wife and
banged her head against a wall
after he discovered that she had
not prepared the food he had
requested, Mena said. The 48-year-
old woman died of a brain haemor-
rhage and her husband has been
detained. – AFP