Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-12-03056/USCOURTS-caDC-12-03056-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Ali Mohamed Ali
Appellee
United States of America
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 19, 2012 Decided June 11, 2013

No. 12-3056

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLANT

v.

ALI MOHAMED ALI, ALSO KNOWN AS AHMED ALI ADAN, ALSO 

KNOWN AS ISMAIL ALI,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:11-cr-00106-1)

David B. Goodhand, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellant. With him on the briefs were Ronald C. 

Machen, Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman, Brenda 

J. Johnson, and Elizabeth Gabriel, Assistant U.S. Attorneys. 

Peter S. Smith, Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered an 

appearance.

Brian C. Brook argued the cause for appellee. With him 

on the brief were Matthew J. Peed and Timothy R. Clinton.

Before: BROWN, Circuit Judge, and EDWARDS and 

SILBERMAN, Senior Circuit Judges.

USCA Case #12-3056 Document #1440653 Filed: 06/11/2013 Page 1 of 32
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BROWN, Circuit Judge: Ali Mohamed Ali, a Somali 

national, helped negotiate the ransom of a merchant vessel 

and its crew after they were captured by marauders in the 

Gulf of Aden. Though he claims merely to have defused a 

tense situation, the government believes he was in cahoots 

with these brigands from the very start. Ali eventually made 

his way to the United States, where he was arrested and 

indicted for conspiring to commit and aiding and abetting two 

offenses: piracy on the high seas and hostage taking. 

The government says Ali is a pirate; he protests that he is 

not. Though a trial will determine whether he is in fact a 

pirate, the question before us is whether the government’s 

allegations are legally sufficient. And the answer to that 

question is complicated by a factor the district court deemed 

critical: Ali’s alleged involvement was limited to acts he 

committed on land and in territorial waters—not upon the 

high seas. Thus, the district court restricted the charge of 

aiding and abetting piracy to his conduct on the high seas and

dismissed the charge of conspiracy to commit piracy. 

Eventually, the district court also dismissed the hostage taking 

charges, concluding that prosecuting him for his acts abroad 

would violate his right to due process. On appeal, we affirm 

dismissal of the charge of conspiracy to commit piracy. We

reverse, however, the district court’s dismissal of the hostage 

taking charges, as well as its decision to limit the aiding and 

abetting piracy charge.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Modern Piracy

Mention “pirates” to most Americans and you are more 

likely to evoke Johnny Depp’s droll depiction of Captain Jack 

Sparrow than concern about the international scourge of 

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piracy that long ago led most civilized states to declare such 

marauders the enemy of all mankind. In unstable parts of the 

world, piracy is serious business, and these troubled waters

have seen a resurgence in pirate attacks, both successful and 

attempted. See, e.g., INT’L MAR. ORG., MSC.4/ CIRC.180,

REPORTS ON ACTS OF PIRACY AND ARMED ROBBERY AGAINST 

SHIPS: ANNUAL REPORT – 2011, at 2 (2012); INT’L MAR.

ORG., MSC.4/CIRC.169, REPORTS ON ACTS OF PIRACY AND 

ARMED ROBBERY AGAINST SHIPS: ANNUAL REPORT – 2010, at 

2 (2011). Pirate attacks have become increasingly daring, as 

well as commonplace, with pirates targeting large commercial 

vessels in transit, hijacking these ships, and ransoming the 

crews. See W. Michael Reisman & Bradley T. Tennis, 

Combating Piracy in East Africa, 35 YALE J. INT’L. L.

ONLINE 14, 16–18 (2009). These predatory activities have

proven especially lucrative in the Gulf of Aden (situated 

between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa and 

bounded by a long stretch of Somalia’s coast), where pirates 

can exploit a key trade route undeterred by Somalia’s unstable 

government. See Milena Sterio, The Somali Piracy Problem: 

A Global Puzzle Necessitating A Global Solution, 59 AM. U.

L. REV. 1449, 1450–51 (2010).

B. Ali’s Offense and Prosecution1

Ali is a member of Somalia’s Warsengeli clan,2 which, 

together with the Majertein clan, plotted the capture of the 

 1 The facts are undisputed for the purpose of this appeal, which 

concerns only the legal sufficiency of the government’s case. See 

United States v. Lattimore, 215 F.2d 847, 849, 851 (D.C. Cir. 

1954).

2 According to a previous government filing, Ali’s origins are 

not entirely certain, since he has represented himself on prior 

occasions sometimes as a Somali national and at other times as a 

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CEC Future, a Danish-owned merchant ship that flew a 

Bahamian flag and carried cargo owned by a U.S. 

corporation. On November 7, 2008, while the CEC Future 

was traveling in the Gulf of Aden on the “high seas”—i.e., 

outside any nation’s territorial waters, RESTATEMENT (THIRD)

OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW § 521 cmt. a (1987)—Ali’s 

compatriots launched their attack. Wielding AK-47s and a 

rocket-propelled grenade, the raiders fired warning shots, 

boarded the ship, and seized the crew. They then forced 

crewmembers at gunpoint to reroute the ship to Point Ras 

Binna, off the coast of Somalia, where, on November 9, Ali 

came aboard and assumed the role of interpreter. The ship 

traveled that same day to Eyl, a Somali port, and remained at 

anchor there until it was ransomed the following January.

Except for a brief period of “minutes” during which the 

CEC Future entered the high seas, the ship traversed 

exclusively territorial waters while Ali was aboard. Ali 

promptly began negotiating with the owners of the CEC 

Future, starting with an initial demand of $7 million for the 

release of the ship, its crew, and its cargo. Discussions

continued into January 2009, when Ali and the CEC Future’s 

owners agreed to a $1.7 million ransom. As payment for his 

assistance, Ali also demanded $100,000 (a figure he later 

reduced to $75,000) be placed in a personal bank account. On 

January 14, the pirates received the agreed-upon $1.7 million, 

and two days later Ali and his cohorts left the ship. Ali’s share 

amounted to $16,500—one percent of the total ransom less 

expenses. He later received his separate $75,000 payment via 

wire transfer to the account he had previously specified. 

 

Yemeni national. See Gov’t Mem. & Proffer Supp. Pretrial 

Detention 5–6. 

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As it happens, “pirate hostage negotiator” is not the only

line on Ali’s resume. In June 2010, he was appointed Director 

General of the Ministry of Education for the Republic of 

Somaliland, a self-proclaimed sovereign state within Somalia.

United States v. Ali (“Ali I”), 870 F. Supp. 2d 10, 17 (D.D.C. 

2012). When he received an email in March 2011 inviting 

him to attend an education conference in Raleigh, North 

Carolina, he agreed. Id. Little did he know it was all an 

elaborate ruse. For some time, federal prosecutors had been

busy building a case against Ali, charging him via criminal 

complaint and later obtaining a formal indictment. When Ali 

landed at Dulles International Airport on April 20, 2011, to 

attend the sham conference, he was promptly arrested. Id.

A grand jury issued a four-count superseding indictment

against Ali, charging him first with conspiracy to commit 

piracy under the law of nations, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 

§ 371, which makes it a crime for “two or more persons” to 

“conspire . . . to commit any offense against the United 

States.” Invoking aiding and abetting liability under 18 U.S.C. 

§ 2, Count Two charged Ali with committing piracy under the 

law of nations, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1651, which 

provides, “Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of 

piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards 

brought into or found in the United States, shall be 

imprisoned for life.” Counts Three and Four analogously 

charged Ali with conspiracy to commit hostage taking and 

aiding and abetting hostage taking, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 

§§ 1203 and 2. The hostage taking statute prescribes criminal 

penalties for

whoever, whether inside or outside the United 

States, seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to 

injure, or to continue to detain another person 

in order to compel a third person or a 

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governmental organization to do or abstain 

from doing any act as an explicit or implicit 

condition for the release of the person 

detained, or attempts or conspires to do so.

Id. § 1203(a). 

Ali filed a motion to dismiss the charges as legally 

defective, meeting with partial success. See United States v. 

Ali (“Ali II”), 885 F. Supp. 2d 17, 45–46 (D.D.C. 2012). 

Beginning with the premise that the definition of piracy under 

international law does not encompass conspiratorial liability, 

the district court dismissed Count One in full, concluding 

§ 1651, which defines piracy in terms of “the law of nations,”

could not ground a conspiracy charge. See id. at 33. The court 

similarly refused to interpret § 371, the federal conspiracy 

statute, as applying to piracy under the law of nations. So 

read, the court said, the statute would contravene international 

law in a way Congress never intended. See id. at 33–34. As 

for Count Two, the court reasoned piracy under § 1651 and 

international law only concerns acts committed on the high 

seas and consequently limited Count Two to acts of aiding 

and abetting Ali committed while he was on the high seas. See 

id. at 32. Finally, the district court declined to dismiss Counts 

Three and Four, ruling that Congress intended whatever

conflict exists between international law and extraterritorial

application of § 1203, id. at 35, and that prosecution for 

extraterritorial acts of hostage taking satisfied the notice 

requirements of due process because Ali’s piracy offenses

already subjected him to the universal jurisdiction of the 

United States, id. at 44–45.

The district court reconsidered Counts Three and Four, 

however, after learning that the government had no “specific 

evidence” Ali had facilitated any acts of piracy while outside 

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territorial waters, and that the CEC Future proceeded on the 

high seas only for a matter of minutes while Ali was aboard. 

See United States v. Ali (“Ali III”), 885 F. Supp. 2d 55, 58 

(D.D.C. 2012). Due process, the court said, is satisfied only if 

Ali had some reasonable expectation he could be haled into an 

American court. So long as the government could establish 

that he had committed piracy on the high seas—a crime over 

which all nations may exercise jurisdiction—this expectation 

was met. But because Ali’s criminal conduct took place in 

territorial waters, he had no notice his actions subjected him 

to prosecution in the United States for hostage taking. Thus, 

in light of the government’s revelation that it could not show

Ali’s offenses occurred on the high seas, due process 

precluded exercising jurisdiction over Counts Three and Four.

Id. at 62.

The government now challenges the district court’s 

dismissal of Counts One, Three, and Four, as well as 

limitation of Count Two. We have jurisdiction over this 

interlocutory appeal because the government challenges an 

“order of a district court dismissing an indictment . . . as to 

any one or more counts.” 18 U.S.C. § 3731.

II. THE PIRACY CHARGES

In most cases, the criminal law of the United States does 

not reach crimes committed by foreign nationals in foreign 

locations against foreign interests. Two judicial presumptions 

promote this outcome. The first is the presumption against the 

extraterritorial effect of statutes: “When a statute gives no 

clear indication of an extraterritorial application, it has none.” 

Morrison v. Nat’l Austl. Bank Ltd., 130 S. Ct. 2869, 2878 

(2010). The second is the judicial presumption that “an act of 

Congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of 

nations if any other possible construction remains,” Murray v. 

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Schooner Charming Betsy, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 64, 118 

(1804)—the so-called Charming Betsy canon. Because 

international law itself limits a state’s authority to apply its 

laws beyond its borders, see RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF 

FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW §§ 402–03, Charming Betsy

operates alongside the presumption against extraterritorial 

effect to check the exercise of U.S. criminal jurisdiction. 

Neither presumption imposes a substantive limit on

Congress’s legislative authority, but they do constrain judicial

inquiry into a statute’s scope.

Piracy, however, is no ordinary offense. The federal 

piracy statute clearly applies extraterritorially to “[w]hoever, 

on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by 

the law of nations,” even though that person is only 

“afterwards brought into or found in the United States.” 18 

U.S.C. § 1651. Likewise, through the principle of universal 

jurisdiction, international law permits states to “define and 

prescribe punishment for certain offenses recognized by the 

community of nations as of universal concern.” 

RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW § 404;

see United States v. Yunis, 924 F.2d 1086, 1091 (D.C. Cir. 

1991). And of all such universal crimes, piracy is the oldest 

and most widely acknowledged. See, e.g., Kenneth C. 

Randall, Universal Jurisdiction Under International Law, 66 

TEX. L. REV. 785, 791 (1988). “Because he commits 

hostilities upon the subjects and property of any or all nations, 

without any regard to right or duty, or any pretence of public 

authority,” the pirate is “hostis humani generis,” United States 

v. Brig Malek Adhel, 43 U.S. (2 How.) 210, 232 (1844)—in 

other words, “an enemy of the human race,” United States v. 

Smith, 18 (5 Wheat.) U.S. 153, 161 (1820). Thus, “all nations 

[may punish] all persons, whether natives or foreigners, who 

have committed this offence against any persons whatsoever, 

with whom they are in amity.” Id. at 162. 

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Universal jurisdiction is not some idiosyncratic domestic 

invention but a creature of international law. Unlike the 

average criminal, a pirate may easily find himself before an 

American court despite committing his offense on the other 

side of the globe. Ali’s situation is a bit more complicated, 

though. His indictment contains no straightforward charge of 

piracy. Rather, the government accuses him of two inchoate 

offenses relating to piracy: conspiracy to commit piracy and 

aiding and abetting piracy. 

On their face, both ancillary statutes apply generally and 

without exception: § 2 to “[w]hoever . . . aids, abets, counsels, 

commands, induces or procures” the commission of “an 

offense against the United States,” 18 U.S.C. § 2(a) (emphasis 

added), and § 371 to persons who “do any act to effect the 

object of the conspiracy” to “commit any offense against the 

United States,” 18 U.S.C. § 371 (emphasis added). But so 

powerful is the presumption against extraterritorial effect that 

even such generic language is insufficient rebuttal. See Small 

v. United States, 544 U.S. 388 (2005). That leaves both 

statutes ambiguous as to their application abroad, requiring us 

to resort to interpretive canons to guide our analysis. 

Given this ambiguity in the extraterritorial scope of the 

two ancillary statutes, we consider whether applying them to 

Ali’s actions is consistent with international law. Conducting 

this Charming Betsy analysis requires parsing through

international treaties, employing interpretive canons, and 

delving into drafting history. Likewise, because the two 

ancillary statutes are “not so broad as to expand the 

extraterritorial reach of the underlying statute,” United States 

v. Yakou, 428 F.3d 241, 252 (D.C. Cir. 2005), we also 

conduct a separate analysis to determine the precise contours 

of § 1651’s extraterritorial scope. Ultimately, Ali’s assault on 

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his conspiracy charge prevails for the same reason the attack 

on the aiding and abetting charge fails. 

A. Aiding and Abetting Piracy

We begin with Ali’s charge of aiding and abetting piracy. 

Aiding and abetting is a theory of criminal liability, not a 

separate offense, United States v. Ginyard, 511 F.3d 203, 211 

(D.C. Cir. 2008)—one that allows a defendant who “aids, 

abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures” commission 

of a crime to be punished as a principal, 18 U.S.C. § 2(a). “All 

that is necessary is to show some affirmative participation 

which at least encourages the principal offender to commit the 

offense, with all its elements, as proscribed by the statute.” 

United States v. Raper, 676 F.2d 841, 850 (D.C. Cir. 1982). 

From Ali’s perspective, it is not enough that acts of piracy 

were committed on the high seas and that he aided and 

abetted them. Rather, he believes any acts of aiding and 

abetting he committed must themselves have occurred in 

extraterritorial waters and not merely supported the capture of 

the CEC Future on the high seas.

Ali’s argument involves two distinct (though closely 

related) inquiries. First, does the Charming Betsy canon pose 

any obstacle to prosecuting Ali for aiding and abetting piracy? 

For we assume, absent contrary indication, Congress intends 

its enactments to comport with international law. Second, is

the presumption against extraterritoriality applicable to acts of 

aiding and abetting piracy not committed on the high seas?

1. Piracy and the Charming Betsy Canon

Section 1651 criminalizes “the crime of piracy as defined 

by the law of nations.” Correspondence between the domestic 

and international definitions is essential to exercising 

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universal jurisdiction. Otherwise, invocation of the magic 

word “piracy” would confer universal jurisdiction on a nation 

and vest its actions with the authority of international law. See

Randall, supra, at 795. As a domestic matter, doing so may be 

perfectly legal. But because Charming Betsy counsels against

interpreting federal statutes to contravene international law, 

we must satisfy ourselves that prosecuting Ali for aiding and 

abetting piracy would be consistent with the law of nations.

Though § 1651’s invocation of universal jurisdiction may 

comport with international law, that does not tell us whether 

§ 2’s broad aider and abettor liability covers conduct neither 

within U.S. territory nor on the high seas. Resolving that 

difficult question requires examining precisely what conduct 

constitutes piracy under the law of nations. Luckily, defining 

piracy is a fairly straightforward exercise. Despite not being a 

signatory, the United States has recognized, via United 

Nations Security Council resolution, that the U.N. Convention 

on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS”) “sets out the legal 

framework applicable to combating piracy and armed robbery 

at sea.” S.C. Res. 2020, U.N. Doc. S/Res/2020, at 2 (Nov. 22, 

2011); see United States v. Dire, 680 F.3d 446, 469 (4th Cir. 

2012). According to UNCLOS:

Piracy consists of any of the following acts:

(a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, 

or any act of depredation, committed for 

private ends by the crew or the 

passengers of a private ship . . . and 

directed:

(i) on the high seas, against another 

ship . . . or against persons or 

property on board such ship . . . ;

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(ii) against a ship, . . . persons or 

property in a place outside the 

jurisdiction of any State;

(b) any act of voluntary participation in the 

operation of a ship . . . with knowledge 

of facts making it a pirate ship . . . ;

(c) any act of inciting or of intentionally 

facilitating an act described in 

subparagraph (a) or (b).

UNCLOS, art. 101, Dec. 10, 1982, 1833 U.N.T.S. 397, 436.

By including “intentionally facilitating” a piratical act within 

its definition of piracy, article 101(c) puts to rest any worry 

that American notions of aider and abettor liability might fail 

to respect the international understanding of piracy.3 One 

question remains: does international law require facilitative 

acts take place on the high seas?

Explicit geographical limits—“on the high seas” and

“outside the jurisdiction of any state”—govern piratical acts

under article 101(a)(i) and (ii). Such language is absent, 

however, in article 101(c), strongly suggesting a facilitative 

act need not occur on the high seas so long as its predicate 

offense has. Cf. Dean v. United States, 556 U.S. 568, 573

(2009) (“[W]here Congress includes particular language in 

one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the 

same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts 

intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or 

exclusion.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). So far, so 

good; Charming Betsy poses no problems.

 3 As neither party draws support for its position from article 

101(b), we need not opine on its meaning here.

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Ali endeavors nonetheless to impute a “high seas” 

requirement to article 101(c) by pointing to UNCLOS article 

86, which states, “The provisions of this Part apply to all parts 

of the sea that are not included in the exclusive economic 

zone, in the territorial sea or in the internal waters of a State, 

or in the archipelagic waters of an archipelagic State.” 1833 

U.N.T.S. at 432. Though, at first glance, the language at issue 

appears generally applicable, there are several problems with 

Ali’s theory that article 86 imposes a strict high seas 

requirement on all provisions in Part VII. For one thing, Ali’s 

reading would result in numerous redundancies throughout 

UNCLOS where, as in article 101(a)(i), the term “high seas” 

is already used, and interpretations resulting in textual 

surplusage are typically disfavored. Cf. Babbitt v. Sweet 

Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Or., 515 U.S. 687, 

698 (1995). Similarly, many of the provisions to which article 

86 applies explicitly concern conduct outside the high seas. 

See, e.g., UNCLOS, art. 92(1), 1833 U.N.T.S. at 433 (“A ship 

may not change its flag during a voyage or while in a port of 

call . . . .”); id. art. 100, 1833 U.N.T.S. at 436 (“All States 

shall cooperate to the fullest possible extent in the repression 

of piracy on the high seas or in any other place outside the 

jurisdiction of any State.”). Ali’s expansive interpretation of 

article 86 is simply not plausible.

What does article 86 mean, then, if it imposes no high 

seas requirement on the other articles in Part VII of 

UNCLOS? After all, “the canon against surplusage merely 

favors that interpretation which avoids surplusage,” not the 

construction substituting one instance of superfluous language 

for another. Freeman v. Quicken Loans, Inc., 132 S. Ct. 2034, 

2043 (2012). We believe it is best understood as definitional, 

explicating the term “high seas” for that portion of the treaty 

most directly discussing such issues. Under this interpretation, 

article 86 mirrors other prefatory provisions in UNCLOS. Part 

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II, for example, concerns “Territorial Sea and Contiguous 

Zone” and so opens with article 2’s explanation of the legal 

status of a State’s territorial sea. 1833 U.N.T.S. at 400. And 

Part III, covering “Straits Used for International Navigation,” 

begins with article 34’s clarification of the legal status of 

straits used for international navigation. 1833 U.N.T.S. at 410. 

Drawing guidance from these provisions, article 86 makes the 

most sense as an introduction to Part VII, which is titled 

“High Seas,” and not as a limit on jurisdictional scope. Cf. 

FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120, 

133 (2000) (“It is a fundamental canon of statutory 

construction that the words of a statute must be read in their 

context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory 

scheme.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). 

Thwarted by article 101’s text, Ali contends that even if 

facilitative acts count as piracy, a nation’s universal 

jurisdiction over piracy offenses is limited to high seas 

conduct. In support of this claim, Ali invokes UNCLOS 

article 105, which reads, 

On the high seas, or in any other place outside 

the jurisdiction of any State, every State may 

seize a pirate ship or aircraft, or a ship or 

aircraft taken by piracy and under the control 

of pirates and arrest the persons and seize the 

property on board. The courts of the State 

which carried out the seizure may decide upon 

the penalties to be imposed . . . .

1833 U.N.T.S. at 437. Ali understands article 105’s preface to 

govern the actual enforcement of antipiracy law—and, by 

extension, to restrict universal jurisdiction to the high seas—

even if the definition of piracy is more expansive. In fact, Ali 

gets it backward. Rather than curtailing the categories of 

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persons who may be prosecuted as pirates, the provision’s 

reference to the high seas highlights the broad authority of 

nations to apprehend pirates even in international waters. His 

reading also proves too much, leaving nations incapable of 

prosecuting even those undisputed pirates they discover

within their own borders—a far cry from “universal” 

jurisdiction. Article 105 is therefore no indication 

international law limits the liability of aiders and abettors to

their conduct on the high seas.

Ali’s next effort to exclude his conduct from the 

international definition of piracy eschews UNCLOS’s text in 

favor of its drafting history—or, rather, its drafting history’s 

drafting history. He points to UNCLOS’s origins in article 15 

of the 1958 Geneva Convention on the High Seas, which

closely parallels the later treaty’s article 101. See Geneva 

Convention on the High Seas, art. 15, Apr. 29, 1958, 13 

U.S.T. 2312, 450 U.N.T.S. 82. Article 15 was based in large 

part on a model convention compiled at Harvard Law School 

by various legal scholars, see 2 ILC YEARBOOK 282 (1956), 

who postulated that “[t]he act of instigation or facilitation is 

not subjected to the common jurisdiction unless it takes place 

outside territorial jurisdiction.” Joseph W. Bingham et al., 

Codification of International Law: Part IV: Piracy, 26 AM. J.

INT’L L. SUPP. 739, 822 (1932). Ali hopes this latter statement 

is dispositive.

Effectively, Ali would have us ignore UNCLOS’s plain 

meaning in favor of eighty-year-old scholarship that may have

influenced a treaty that includes language similar to UNCLOS 

article 101. This is a bridge too far. Legislative history is an 

imperfect enough guide when dealing with acts of Congress. 

See Conroy v. Aniskoff, 507 U.S. 511, 519 (1993) (Scalia, J., 

concurring in the judgment) (“If one were to search for an 

interpretive technique that, on the whole, was more likely to 

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confuse than to clarify, one could hardly find a more 

promising candidate than legislative history.”). Ali’s 

inferential chain compounds the flaws—and that even 

assumes a single intent can be divined as easily from the 

myriad foreign governments that ratified the agreement as 

from a group of individual legislators. Even were it a more 

feasible exercise, weighing the relevance of scholarly work 

that indirectly inspired UNCLOS is not an avenue open to us. 

Basic principles of treaty interpretation—both domestic and 

international—direct courts to construe treaties based on their 

text before resorting to extraneous materials. See United 

States v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655, 663 (1992) (“In 

construing a treaty, as in construing a statute, we first look to 

its terms to determine its meaning.”); Vienna Convention on 

the Law of Treaties, art. 32, May 23, 1969, 8 I.L.M. 679, 692, 

1155 U.N.T.S. 331, 340. Because international law permits 

prosecuting acts of aiding and abetting piracy committed 

while not on the high seas, the Charming Betsy canon is no 

constraint on the scope of Count Two.

2. Piracy and the Presumption Against Extraterritorial Effect

Ali next attempts to achieve through the presumption 

against extraterritoriality what he cannot with Charming 

Betsy. Generally, the extraterritorial reach of an ancillary 

offense like aiding and abetting or conspiracy is coterminous 

with that of the underlying criminal statute. Yakou, 428 F.3d 

at 252. And when the underlying criminal statute’s 

extraterritorial reach is unquestionable, the presumption is 

rebutted with equal force for aiding and abetting. See United 

States v. Hill, 279 F.3d 731, 739 (9th Cir. 2002) (“[A]iding 

and abetting[] and conspiracy . . . have been deemed to confer 

extraterritorial jurisdiction to the same extent as the offenses 

that underlie them.”); see also Yunis, 924 F.2d at 1091 

(analyzing underlying offenses under extraterritoriality canon 

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but conducting no separate analysis with respect to conspiracy 

conviction). Ali admits the piracy statute must have some 

extraterritorial reach—after all, its very terms cover conduct 

outside U.S. territory—but denies that the extraterritorial 

scope extends to any conduct that was not itself perpetrated 

on the high seas.

We note, as an initial matter, that proving a defendant 

guilty of aiding and abetting does not ordinarily require the 

government to establish “participation in each substantive and 

jurisdictional element of the underlying offense.” United 

States v. Garrett, 720 F.2d 705, 713 n.4 (D.C. Cir. 1983). A 

defendant could, for example, aid and abet “travel[ing] in 

foreign commerce[] for the purpose of engaging in any illicit 

sexual conduct with another person,” 18 U.S.C. § 2423(b), 

without himself crossing any international border. Cf. Raper, 

676 F.2d at 850.

Ali’s argument appears to be more nuanced. Ali claims 

the government seeks to use aider and abettor liability to 

expand the extraterritorial scope of the piracy statute beyond 

conduct on the high seas. Because § 1651 expressly targets

crimes committed on the high seas, he believes Congress 

intended its extraterritorial effect—and, by extension, that of 

the aiding and abetting statute—to extend to international 

waters and no further. And, he claims, our opinion in United 

States v. Yakou supports this proposition by deciding that a 

foreign national who had renounced his legal permanent 

resident status could not be prosecuted for aiding and abetting 

under a statute applicable to “‘[a]ny U.S. person, wherever 

located, and any foreign person located in the United States or 

otherwise subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.’” 

428 F.3d at 243 n.1 (quoting 22 C.F.R. § 129.3(a)). But this 

language makes clear the intention to limit U.S. criminal 

jurisdiction to certain categories of persons—a restriction

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18

employing broad aider and abettor liability would have 

frustrated. See 438 F.3d at 252. In other words, Yakou spoke 

to the sort of defendant Congress had in mind, while § 1651’s 

reference to the high seas, in contrast, describes a category of 

conduct.

Thus, instead of thwarting some clearly expressed 

Congressional purpose, extending aider and abettor liability to 

those who facilitate such conduct furthers the goal of 

deterring piracy on the high seas—even when the facilitator 

stays close to shore. In fact, Yakou distinguished the offense 

at issue there from those crimes—like piracy—in which “the 

evil sought to be averted inherently relates to, and indeed 

requires, persons in certain categories.” Id. In keeping with 

that principle, § 1651’s high seas language refers to the very 

feature of piracy that makes it such a threat: that it exists

outside the reach of any territorial authority, rendering it both 

notoriously difficult to police and inimical to international 

commerce. See Eugene Kontorovich, Implementing Sosa v. 

Alvarez-Machain: What Piracy Reveals About the Limits of 

the Alien Tort Statute, 80 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 111, 152–53 

(2004). As UNCLOS § 101(c) recognizes, it is self-defeating 

to prosecute those pirates desperate enough to do the dirty 

work but immunize the planners, organizers, and negotiators

who remain ashore.

Nor does the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Kiobel 

v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 133 S. Ct. 1659 (2013), 

change the equation. Reiterating that “[w]hen a statute 

provides for some extraterritorial application, the presumption 

against extraterritoriality operates to limit that provision to its 

terms,’” the Court rejected the notion that “because Congress 

surely intended the [Alien Tort Statute] to provide jurisdiction 

for actions against pirates, it necessarily anticipated the statute 

would apply to conduct occurring abroad.” Id. at 1667

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19

(quoting Morrison, 130 S. Ct. at 2883). Ali contends that

§ 1651’s high seas requirement is similarly limiting, and that 

the presumption against extraterritoriality remains intact as to 

acts done elsewhere.

Even assuming Ali’s analogy to Kiobel is valid,

4 he 

overlooks a crucial fact: § 1651’s high seas element is not the 

only evidence of the statute’s extraterritorial reach, for the 

statute references not only “the high seas” but also “the crime 

of piracy as defined by the law of nations.” As explained 

already, the law of nations specifically contemplates, within 

its definition of piracy, facilitative acts undertaken from 

within a nation’s territory. See supra Subsection II.A.1. By 

defining piracy in terms of the law of nations, § 1651

incorporated this extraterritorial application of the 

international law of piracy and indicates Congress’s intent to 

subject extraterritorial acts like Ali’s to prosecution.

Why then does § 1651 mention the high seas at all if “the 

law of nations,” which has its own high seas requirements, is 

filling in the statute’s content? Simply put, doing so fits the 

international definition of piracy—a concept that 

encompasses both crimes on the high seas and the acts that 

facilitate them—into the structure of U.S. criminal law. To be 

convicted as a principal under § 1651 alone, one must commit 

piratical acts on the high seas, just as UNCLOS article 101(a) 

 4 Kiobel and its predecessors stated that courts may not infer 

that all applications or provisions in a statute have extraterritorial 

effect just because some do. See, e.g., Morrison, 130 S. Ct. at 2883; 

Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 455–56 (2007). 

These cases do not suggest, as Ali argues, that a statute’s 

application to a particular foreign region cannot rebut the 

presumption against extraterritoriality as to other unspecified 

places. 

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demands. But applying aider and abettor liability to the sorts 

of facilitative acts proscribed by UNCLOS article 101(c) 

requires using § 1651 and § 2 in tandem. That is not to say 

§ 1651’s high seas requirement plays no role in prosecuting 

Ali for aiding and abetting piracy, for the government must 

prove someone committed piratical acts while on the high 

seas. See Raper, 676 F.2d at 849. That is an element the

government must prove at trial, but not one it must show Ali 

perpetrated personally.

5

Of course, § 1651’s high seas language could also be read 

as Congress’s decision to narrow the scope of the 

international definition of piracy to encompass only those

actions committed on the high seas. But Ali’s preferred 

interpretation has some problems. Most damningly, to 

understand § 1651 as a circumscription of the law of nations 

would itself run afoul of Charming Betsy, requiring a 

construction in conflict with international law. Ultimately, we 

think it most prudent to read the statute the way it tells us to. 

It is titled “[p]iracy under law of nations,” after all.

Like the Charming Betsy canon, the presumption against 

extraterritorial effect does not constrain trying Ali for aiding 

and abetting piracy. While the offense he aided and abetted 

must have involved acts of piracy committed on the high seas, 

his own criminal liability is not contingent on his having 

facilitated these acts while in international waters himself. 

B. Conspiracy To Commit Piracy

 5 The “high seas” reference may also be Congress’s attempt to 

expressly rebut the presumption against extraterritoriality as to 

piracy. See Argentine Republic v. Amerada Hess Shipping Corp., 

488 U.S. 428, 440 (1989) (“When it desires to do so, Congress 

knows how to place the high seas within the jurisdictional reach of 

a statute.”).

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21

Though the aiding and abetting statute reaches Ali’s 

conduct, his conspiracy charge is another matter. In many 

respects conspiracy and aiding and abetting are alike, which 

would suggest the government’s ability to charge Ali with one 

implies the ability to charge him with both. While conspiracy 

is a “separate and distinct” offense in the United States, 

Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 643 (1946), it is 

also a theory of liability like aiding and abetting; “[a]s long as 

a substantive offense was done in furtherance of the 

conspiracy, and was reasonably foreseeable as a necessary or 

natural consequence of the unlawful agreement, then a 

conspirator will be held vicariously liable for the offense 

committed by his or her co-conspirators.” United States v. 

Moore, 651 F.3d 30, 80 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (per curiam) 

(internal quotation marks omitted).

Yet a crucial difference separates the two theories of 

liability. Because § 371, like § 2, fails to offer concrete 

evidence of its application abroad, we turn, pursuant to the 

Charming Betsy canon, to international law to help us resolve 

this ambiguity of meaning. Whereas UNCLOS, by including 

facilitative acts within article 101’s definition of piracy, 

endorses aider and abettor liability for pirates, the convention 

is silent on conspiratorial liability. International law provides 

for limited instances in which nations may prosecute the 

crimes of foreign nationals committed abroad, and, in 

invoking universal jurisdiction here, the government 

predicates its prosecution of Ali on one of those theories. And 

although neither side disputes the applicability of universal 

jurisdiction to piracy as defined by the law of nations, 

UNCLOS’s plain language does not include conspiracy to 

commit piracy. See, e.g., Ved P. Nanda, Maritime Piracy: 

How Can International Law and Policy Address This 

Growing Global Menace?, 39 DENV. J. INT’L L. & POL’Y 177, 

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22

181 (2011) (“It should be noted that the [UNCLOS] definition 

does not refer to either an attempt to commit an act of piracy 

or to conspiracy relating to such an act, but it does include 

voluntary participation or facilitation.”). The government 

offers us no reason to believe otherwise, and at any rate, we 

are mindful that “imposing liability on the basis of a violation 

of ‘international law’ or the ‘law of nations’ or the ‘law of 

war’ generally must be based on norms firmly grounded in 

international law.” Hamdan v. United States, 696 F.3d 1238, 

1250 n.10 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (emphasis added). International 

law does not permit the government’s abortive use of

universal jurisdiction to charge Ali with conspiracy. Thus, the 

Charming Betsy doctrine, which was no impediment to Ali’s 

aider and abettor liability, cautions against his prosecution for 

conspiracy.

The government hopes nonetheless to salvage its 

argument through appeal to § 371’s text. Though courts 

construe statutes, when possible, to accord with international 

law, Congress has full license to enact laws that supersede it.

See Yunis, 924 F.2d at 1091. The government suggests 

Congress intended to do precisely that in § 371, which 

provides that “[i]f two or more persons conspire . . . to 

commit any offense against the United States . . . and one or 

more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the 

conspiracy,” each is subject to criminal liability. Homing in 

on the phrase “any offense against the United States,” the 

government contends Congress intended the statute to apply 

to all federal criminal statutes, even when the result conflicts 

with international law. Yet, as we explained above, if we are 

to interpret § 371 as supplanting international law, we need 

stronger evidence than this. Indeed, the Supreme Court 

recently rejected the notion that similar language of general 

application successfully rebuts the presumption against 

extraterritorial effect. See Kiobel, 133 S. Ct. at 1665 (“Nor 

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23

does the fact that the text reaches ‘any civil action’ suggest 

application to torts committed abroad; it is well established 

that generic terms like ‘any’ or ‘every’ do not rebut the 

presumption against extraterritoriality.”). 

Under international law, prosecuting Ali for conspiracy 

to commit piracy would require the United States to have 

universal jurisdiction over his offense. And such jurisdiction 

would only exist if the underlying charge actually falls within 

UNCLOS’s definition of piracy. Because conspiracy, unlike 

aiding and abetting, is not part of that definition, and because 

§ 371 falls short of expressly rejecting international law, 

Charming Betsy precludes Ali’s prosecution for conspiracy to 

commit piracy. The district court properly dismissed Count 

One.

III. THE HOSTAGE TAKING CHARGES

The linguistic impediments that trouble Counts One and 

Two do not beset the charges for hostage taking under 18 

U.S.C. § 1203. The statute’s extraterritorial scope is as clear 

as can be, prescribing punishments against “whoever, whether 

inside or outside the United States, seizes or detains and 

threatens to kill, to injure, or to continue to detain another 

person in order to compel a third person or a governmental 

organization to do or abstain from doing any act.” 18 U.S.C. 

§ 1203(a). We also need not worry about Charming Betsy’s 

implications, as § 1203 unambiguously criminalizes Ali’s

conduct. Section 1203 likely reflects international law

anyway, as it fulfills U.S. treaty obligations under the widely 

supported International Convention Against the Taking of 

Hostages, Dec. 17, 1979, 18 I.L.M. 1456, 1316 U.N.T.S. 205. 

See United States v. Lin, 101 F.3d 760, 766 (D.C. Cir. 1996). 

Nor, as in the case of the federal piracy statute, is there any 

uncertainty as to the availability of conspiratorial liability, 

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24

since the statute applies equally to any person who “attempts 

or conspires to” commit hostage taking. 18 U.S.C. § 1203(a). 

Faced with this reality, Ali has adopted a different 

strategy when it comes to Counts Three and Four, swapping

his statutory arguments for constitutional ones. He relies on 

the principle embraced by many courts that the Fifth 

Amendment’s guarantee of due process may impose limits on

a criminal law’s extraterritorial application even when 

interpretive canons do not. Though this Circuit has yet to 

speak definitively, see United States v. Delgado-Garcia, 374 

F.3d 1337, 1341–43 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (explaining that, even if 

prosecuting the appellants for their extraterritorial conduct 

would deprive them of due process, the argument had been 

waived through their unconditional guilty pleas), several other

circuits have reasoned that before a federal criminal statute is 

given extraterritorial effect, due process requires “a sufficient 

nexus between the defendant and the United States, so that 

such application would not be arbitrary or fundamentally 

unfair.” United States v. Davis, 905 F.2d 245, 248–49 (9th 

Cir. 1990) (internal citation omitted); see United States v. 

Brehm, 691 F.3d 547, 552 (4th Cir. 2012); United States v. 

Ibarguen-Mosquera, 634 F.3d 1370, 1378–79 (11th Cir. 

2011); United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56, 111–12 (2d Cir. 

2003) (per curiam); United States v. Cardales, 168 F.3d 548, 

552–53 (1st Cir. 1999).

6 Others have approached the due 

 6 Some courts have suggested grouping these decisions into 

two categories: those that “look for real effects or consequences 

accruing in the United States before they find [a] nexus” and those 

that “require only that extraterritorial prosecution be neither 

arbitrary nor fundamentally unfair, and are not concerned with 

whether a sufficient nexus exists.” United States v. Campbell, 798 

F. Supp. 2d 293, 306–07 (D.D.C. 2011). The distinction may be 

illusory, with the “nexus” inquiry serving more as a proxy for 

whether a particular prosecution is unfair. See id. at 307. For 

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process issue in more cautious terms. See United States v. 

Suerte, 291 F.3d 366, 375 (5th Cir. 2002) (assuming, without 

deciding, the Due Process Clause constrains extraterritorial 

reach in order to conclude no violation occurred); United 

States v. Martinez-Hidalgo, 993 F.2d 1052, 1056 (3d Cir. 

1993) (accord). Likewise, the principle is not without its 

scholarly critics. See, e.g., Curtis A. Bradley, Universal 

Jurisdiction and U.S. Law, 2001 U. CHI. LEGAL F. 323, 338 

(“[I]t may be logically awkward for a defendant to rely on 

what could be characterized as an extraterritorial application 

of the U.S. Constitution in an effort to block the 

extraterritorial application of U.S. law.”). We need not decide, 

however, whether the Constitution limits the extraterritorial 

exercise of federal criminal jurisdiction. Either way, Ali’s 

prosecution under § 1203 safely satisfies the requirements

erected by the Fifth Amendment.7

A. Due Process and Extraterritorial Conduct

In support of his due process argument, Ali cites a 

panoply of cases concerning personal jurisdiction in the 

context of civil suits. It is true courts have periodically 

borrowed the language of personal jurisdiction in discussing 

the due process constraints on extraterritoriality. But Ali’s 

flawed analogies do not establish actual standards for judicial 

 

present purposes, that question is purely academic, as Ali does not 

tether his argument to a particular version of the due process 

argument.

7 Ali has not cited—and we have not found—any case in 

which extraterritorial application of a federal criminal statute was 

actually deemed a due process violation. Although that does not 

mean such a result is beyond the realm of possibility, it does 

suggest Ali’s burden is a heavy one, for he traverses uncharted 

territory.

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inquiry; the law of personal jurisdiction is simply inapposite.

See United States v. Perez Oviedo, 281 F.3d 400, 403 (3d Cir. 

2002). To the extent the nexus requirement serves as a proxy 

for due process, it addresses the broader concern of ensuring 

that “a United States court will assert jurisdiction only over a 

defendant who should reasonably anticipate being haled into 

court in this country.” United States v. Klimavicius-Viloria, 

144 F.3d 1249, 1257 (9th Cir. 1998) (internal quotation marks 

omitted). What appears to be the animating principle 

governing the due process limits of extraterritorial jurisdiction 

is the idea that “no man shall be held criminally responsible 

for conduct which he could not reasonably understand to be 

proscribed.” Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 351

(1964) (internal quotation marks omitted). The “ultimate 

question” is whether “application of the statute to the 

defendant [would] be arbitrary or fundamentally unfair.” 

United States v. Juda, 46 F.3d 961, 967 (9th Cir. 1995).

United States v. Shi, 525 F.3d 709 (9th Cir. 2008), is 

most on point. Shi dealt with a due process challenge to the 

defendant’s prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 2280, which 

implements the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful 

Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation, Mar. 10, 

1988, 27 I.L.M. 672, 1678 U.N.T.S. 222. See 525 F.3d at 

717–24. Because “the Maritime Safety Convention . . . 

expressly provides foreign offenders with notice that their 

conduct will be prosecuted by any state signatory,” due 

process required no specific nexus between the defendant and 

the United States. Id. at 723. In other words, the treaty at issue 

in Shi did what the International Convention Against the 

Taking of Hostages does here: provide global notice that 

certain generally condemned acts are subject to prosecution 

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by any party to the treaty.8 We agree with the Ninth Circuit 

that the Due Process Clause demands no more.

That Ali’s Counts Three and Four concern hostage taking

and not piracy in the technical sense does nothing to alter 

Shi’s logic. The Ninth Circuit did reason that “the acts with 

which Shi is charged constitute acts of piracy” and 

“[p]rosecuting piracy was the original rationale for creating 

universal jurisdiction.” Id. Yet strictly speaking, Shi was not 

charged with piracy but with the separate, albeit analogous, 

offense of violence against maritime navigation. See 18 

U.S.C. § 2280. And it is the “universal condemnation of the 

offender’s conduct,” not some theory of universal jurisdiction, 

that drove the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning. 525 F.3d at 723. 

That is why the court also cited Martinez-Hidalgo, which 

dealt with narcotics trafficking, see 993 F.2d at 1056—an 

offense not generally understood to be subject to universal 

jurisdiction, see RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN 

RELATIONS LAW § 404. By that standard, hostage taking is 

also an offense whose proscription “is a result of universal 

condemnation of those activities and general interest in 

cooperating to suppress them, as reflected in widely-accepted 

 8 Interestingly, Shi even offers some insight into our own 

Circuit’s precedent. Citing our opinion in United States v. Rezaq, 

134 F.3d 1121 (D.C. Cir. 1998), the Ninth Circuit found 

particularly relevant our decision to apply an aircraft hijacking 

statute to the defendant “without noting any possible due process 

concerns.” 525 F.3d at 724. Acknowledging that our silence “may 

have stemmed from any number of reasons,” the court found it 

“important to note that, like § 2280, the statute in Rezaq was 

enacted to implement an international agreement to extradite and to 

prosecute perpetrators of widely-condemned conduct.” Id. Rezaq is 

not squarely analogous, however, since “hijacking of aircraft,” like 

piracy, is a universal jurisdiction offense. See 134 F.3d at 1131; 

RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW § 404.

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international agreements and resolutions of international 

organizations.” Id. § 404 cmt. a. Regardless, Shi’s comparison 

of § 2280 to piracy was an alternate holding, not a necessary 

premise to its conclusion that a treaty may provide notice 

sufficient to satisfy due process—a fact even Ali concedes. 

See Appellee Br. 37. 

Ali also complains that though China was a signatory to 

the relevant international agreement in Shi, Somalia is not a 

party to the International Convention Against the Taking of 

Hostages,

9 meaning his home nation has not consented to 

U.S. criminal jurisdiction over its hostage-taking nationals. 

True, as a matter of international law, this case may not be so 

obvious as those in which “the flag nation has consented to 

the application of United States law to the defendants.”

United States v. Angulo-Hernández, 565 F.3d 2, 11 (1st Cir. 

2009). But Ali mistakes the due process inquiry for the 

customary international law of jurisdiction. “Whatever merit 

[these] claims may have as a matter of international law, they 

cannot prevail before this court. . . . Our duty is to enforce the 

Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States, not to 

conform the law of the land to norms of customary 

international law.” Yunis, 924 F.2d at 1091. Whatever due 

process requires here, the Hostage Taking Convention 

suffices by “expressly provid[ing] foreign offenders with 

notice that their conduct will be prosecuted by any state 

signatory.” Shi, 525 F.3d at 723. That is what Shi said. It did 

not hold that due process depends on the participation of the 

defendant’s nation in the agreement.

 9 Somalia does not join most other nations in this regard. As of 

May 28, 2013, the treaty has 39 signatories and 170 parties. See 

United Nations Treaty Collection, International Convention Against 

the Taking of Hostages, available at

http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?mtdsg_no=XVIII5&chapter=18&lang=en.

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Finally, Ali asserts that “[f]or non-citizens acting entirely 

abroad, a jurisdictional nexus exists when the aim of that 

activity is to cause harm inside the United States or to U.S. 

citizens or interests.” United States v. Al Kassar, 660 F.3d 

108, 118 (2d Cir. 2011). In Al Kassar, these interests were 

present because “[t]he defendants’ conspiracy was to sell 

arms to FARC with the understanding that they would be used 

to kill Americans and destroy U.S. property.” Id. There is 

good reason to believe that whatever “nexus” due process 

might demand is not “jurisdictional” in the proper sense of the 

term. See Delgado-Garcia, 374 F.3d at 1343 (“Appellants’ . . 

. . assertion is a claim that the due process clause limits the 

substantive reach of the conduct elements of 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1324(a), not a claim that the court lacks the power to bring 

them to court at all.”). But even assuming Al Kassar’s 

characterization is right, the decision only tells us when such 

a nexus exists, not when it is absent. See New England Power 

Generators Ass’n v. FERC, 707 F.3d 364, 370 n.3 (D.C. Cir. 

2013) (“‘P ⊃ Q’ does not mean ‘¬P ⊃ ¬Q.’”). And in any 

event, this quote from Al Kassar cannot sustain the expansive

construction Ali accords it. Otherwise, the Fifth Amendment

would preclude prosecution even of universal jurisdiction 

offenses like piracy.

Al Kassar also states, “Fair warning does not require that 

the defendants understand that they could be subject to 

criminal prosecution in the United States so long as they 

would reasonably understand that their conduct was criminal 

and would subject them to prosecution somewhere.” 660 F.3d 

at 119. Other courts have made similar statements. See, e.g., 

Martinez-Hidalgo, 993 F.2d at 1056 (“Inasmuch as the 

trafficking of narcotics is condemned universally by lawabiding nations, we see no reason to conclude that it is 

‘fundamentally unfair’ for Congress to provide for the 

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30

punishment of persons apprehended with narcotics on the 

high seas.”). While Ali protests that the Second Circuit cannot 

have meant what it said, the consequence of a literal reading

is not the limitless prosecutorial power he envisions. Given 

presumptions like the Charming Betsy and extraterritoriality 

canons, conduct abroad would only be subject to statutes with 

clear foreign scope (like § 1203). In fact, since it is those 

canons and not the Fifth Amendment that have thus far 

restrained such prosecutorial abuse, Ali’s claim that the 

government’s position somehow vitiates essential protections

seems dubious.

Lastly, we mention that the district court initially denied 

dismissal of Counts Three and Four. See Ali II, 885 F. Supp. 

2d at 45 (“Because the hostage taking charges allege the same 

high-seas conduct for which Ali is lawfully subject to 

prosecution for piracy, and in light of the notice that the 

Hostage Taking Convention provides, the Court concludes 

that there is nothing fundamentally unfair about Ali's 

prosecution under § 1203.”). It was only once the district 

court doubted the government’s ability to prove either piracy 

count that it decided haling Ali into a U.S. court to answer 

charges of hostage taking would violate due process. See Ali 

III, 885 F. Supp. 2d at 61–62. Since we have reversed the 

district court’s decision narrowing the scope of Count Two, 

the logic of Ali II, which allowed Ali’s charges for hostage 

taking to proceed, is once again applicable.

B. Miscellaneous Due Process Arguments

For his final salvo, Ali fires a barrage of “Special 

Criminal Law Concerns” he claims are relevant to his right to 

due process. We respond in kind:

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• Ali laments the “lack of vicinage” between his alleged 

crime and the legal forum set for his prosecution. See 

United States v. Cores, 356 U.S. 405, 407 (1958) (“The 

provision for trial in the vicinity of the crime is a 

safeguard against the unfairness and hardship involved 

when an accused is prosecuted in a remote place.”). But 

Counts Three and Four introduce no unique detriment to 

Ali’s defense beyond that already inherent to his piracy 

prosecution. And the sweep of Ali’s argument is 

overinclusive, as it would seemingly defeat all

extraterritorial applications of criminal statutes.

• Ali next targets the length of his pretrial detention. While 

he is correct that excessive pretrial detention may in 

certain circumstances deprive a defendant of his right to a 

speedy trial, “courts must still engage in a difficult and 

sensitive balancing process.” Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 

514, 533 (1972). Beyond stating the length of his 

detention, Ali has offered no specifics on how his rights 

have been violated or his defense prejudiced.

• Invoking double jeopardy norms, Ali contends his 

susceptibility to future prosecution in, say, Denmark or 

Somalia renders inappropriate his prosecution in the 

United States. Though he acknowledges the Fifth 

Amendment’s prohibition on double jeopardy does not 

constrain prosecutions by separate sovereigns, see United 

States v. Rashed, 234 F.3d 1280, 1282 (D.C. Cir. 2000), 

he nonetheless tries to smuggle in the underlying principle 

via the Due Process Clause. To invoke the principle of 

double jeopardy in order to thwart a well-recognized 

exception to the Double Jeopardy Clause is already 

strange. Yet even more mystifying is his attempt to make 

the point in the first forum to subject him to criminal 

charges. It seems such an argument would be more 

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32

compelling in the next forum (if any) that opts to 

prosecute him.

Along with these due process concerns, Ali discusses 

principles of international comity. The issue, as well as its 

import for due process, is addressed in cursory fashion. No 

matter. An amorphous reference to international comity is no 

basis for gainsaying the clearly expressed intention of the 

United States, by both treaty and statute, to prosecute hostage 

takers for their offenses abroad.

IV. CONCLUSION

We affirm the district court’s dismissal of Count One. 

We reverse the district court’s narrowing of the scope of 

Count Two to acts Ali performed while on the high seas and 

reverse dismissal of Counts Three and Four.

So ordered.

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