A pair of Somali pirates were each sentenced to 30 years in prison for holding American journalist Michael Scott Moore hostage from January 2012 to September 2014.
Abdi Yusuf Hassan, 56, is a naturalized U.S. citizen residing in Minneapolis, and Mohamed Tahlil Mohamed is from Mogadishu, Somalia.
The two were sentenced for terrorism, hostage-taking and firearms offenses, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams announced Tuesday.
In 2012, Hassan was the interior minister in Somalia’s Galmudug province, in charge of local police and security forces, while Mohamed was an officer in the Somali army.
Hassan was the leader of the pirates that took Mr. Moore captive, while Mohamed was the operation’s head of security and armorer, the Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
Mr. Moore, a freelance journalist, was in the country to report on the Somali economy and piracy when, on Jan. 21, 2012, he was seized from his vehicle, beaten with weapons, and moved into captivity with fishermen from the Seychelles.
Mr. Moore was repeatedly moved around Somalia, including onto a seized ship the F/V Naham III, where he was held with one of the Seychellois fishermen and the crew of the ship, who hailed from the Philippines, Vietnam and China among other countries.
Mr. Moore was taken on and off the ship at various points, including one incident where he was forced to watch the unnamed Seychellois fisherman be hung by his feet by a tree, beaten and tortured.
Over the course of his captivity, Mr. Moore was moved from location to location, chained up at night and forced to make videos asking for ransom.
His eventual release in September 2014 was secured with a $1.6 million ransom.
Hassan was arrested in Minneapolis in 2019, while Mohamed was jailed in New York City in 2018, according to The Associated Press.
Federal officials have not described the circumstances of either man’s entry into the U.S. or the details of their arrests.
Hassan already had at least resided in the U.S. before going back to Somalia by the time of the Moore kidnapping.
“For nearly three years, Michael Scott Moore was held hostage in Somalia by pirates. He was beaten, chained to the floor, and threatened with assault rifles and machine guns … Both abused their positions in Somalia’s government—Hassan, as a senior security official, and Mohamed as an army officer—by keeping a U.S. citizen captive to satisfy their own greed,” Mr. Williams said.
Somalia remains among the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.
It topped the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists Impunity Index, which accounts for the number of unsolved murders of journalists in a country, from 2015 through 2022.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.