Opinion ID: 902495
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ali’s Offense and Prosecution 1

Text: 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 4 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. 5 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 6 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 7 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.