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The teenager captured last week in a showdown off the Somali coast has arrived in the US for trial. He will be the first person to be charged with piracy in the US in over a century – if convicted he will face a mandatory life sentence. The 5 ft 2 in Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse is also accused of stealing $30,000 in cash from a safe. Accounts of his real age are mixed – news media are reporting that he has admitted to being 18, while his lawyer and parents say he is 15 and 16 respectively. He will be tried as an adult in US courts even though he surrendered himself to the US Navy seeking treatment of an injury. The boy’s father, who is a poor nomad, said his son was illiterate and was tricked into joining the group of bandits that hijacked the US cargo ship. The boy’s mother was interviewed by the BBC, pleading with the US government to return her son. But the response of many US pundits has been to call for blood and equate piracy with terrorism. A recent Washington Post op-ed was simply titled, “Kill the Pirates,” and Robert Kaplan in the New York Times writes “The big danger in our day is that piracy can potentially serve as a platform for terrorists.” Could the phenomenon we call ‘piracy’ become the new focus on the “war on terror”?

GUEST: John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies

John’s article can be found here: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175062