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Let's Just Get Some Rope


Subdeacon Joe

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Somehow, I just can't work up a lot of sympathy here.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15068088

 

Two Somali pirates are expected to be sentenced to life in US prison on Monday, joining nine others who have just begun long sentences for their roles in hijacking attempts. What's in store for them as they enter the alien, unforgiving world of the American jail system?

 

Federal prison is a frightening, perilous environment of intrigue, violent gangs, terrible food and severe isolation, even for the most hardened criminal.

 

For men from a faraway land with little or no English-language skills and no prior familiarity with American culture, it will be especially hard, say lawyers for the men, and experts in psychology and the criminal justice system.

Barriers

 

Seven Somali men have already been sentenced to life in prison and two more to three-decade terms for their roles in hijackings of US-flagged ships. All the Somalis were brought to the US after their capture by the US Navy.

 

On Monday morning, Muhidin Salad Omar was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to his part in the hijacking in February of the yacht S/V Quest, in which pirates shot to death four American sailors.

 

Mahdi Jama Mohamed is scheduled to be sentenced later in the day in the same case, and on Tuesday, four more men are to be sentenced to automatic life terms in prison following their guilty pleas to piracy counts. More are to be sentenced in the autumn.

 

"Piracy involves armed hijacking on the high seas with a very real threat of death to those taken hostage," says US Attorney Neil MacBride of the eastern district of Virginia, who is prosecuting more than a dozen pirates.

 

"The US Congress has set the penalty for piracy as a mandatory life sentence, and we intend to prosecute these cases to demonstrate that anyone who chooses to engage in piracy against US interests will face severe consequences."

 

The men speak little English, if any, and were raised largely in abject poverty in villages an ocean and a continent away from the US.

 

Language and cultural barriers will make it difficult for the men to form the support groups and informal social networks that lawyers and social workers say are necessary to get by in prison.

 

"They have all the stressors associated with prison," says Frederic Reamer, a professor of social work at Rhode Island College with extensive experience working in prisons and a member of the Rhode Island state parole board.

 

"But unlike most inmates, they cannot just go into the dining hall and sit at a table and start conversing with people with whom they have some shared cultural experience. They are likely to be isolated in every imaginable way.

 

Likely these thugs, as guests of the US, will enjoy better food, better sleeping quarters, better medical treatment, than they ever had before.

 

Jean & Scott Adams, Phyllis Macay, Robert Riggle had no comment on this.

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I can't find much fault with the way the Russians handled it... -_-

 

Gave 'em a fair chance, it sounds like. They had the Sun, they had the stars, lots of navigation was done by those.

 

 

Unquestionably this amounts to cruel and inhumane punishment, bordering on torture. The compassionate thing, the only thing to do, is put them out of their pain.

 

Nice bit of sophistry there! I like that.

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Hanging in public and gibbeting the bodies was the usual punishment during the golden age of pyracy. Seems that historic punishment for inhuman crimes would be in order. I wonder what their victims endured bfore they died?

 

Bodine

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I agree with Hardpan and think it should have been handled the way the Russians did it. (Some now claim that the Russians actually killed all of the pirates before they put them in the inflatable boat.) Hey, if you don't like the treatment, don't be a pirate.

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Hanging in public and gibbeting the bodies was the usual punishment during the golden age of pyracy. Seems that historic punishment for inhuman crimes would be in order. I wonder what their victims endured bfore they died?

 

Bodine

 

 

Okay, I have to admit I had to look up what a gibbet was... learn something every day.

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Okay, I have to admit I had to look up what a gibbet was... learn something every day.

 

Amazing how educational a saloon can be, isn't it?

 

(and not it the Paint Your Wagon "I give you the boy, I expect back the man" way, either.)

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