By KUNA,
Tokyo : A South Korean appeals court on Thursday sentenced a Somali pirate to life in prison after he was convicted of hijacking a South Korean ship in the Arabian Sea and shooting its captain earlier this year, upholding a lower court ruling, Yonhap News Agency reported.
Mahomed Arai, 23, received the same sentence from the Busan District Court in May for attempting to murder the ship’s Korean captain Seok Hae-kyun.
Prosecutors have consistently demanded the death penalty for Arai. Arai was one of the five pirates captured during a January 21 commando operation by South Korea’s Navy to rescue the South Korean chemical carrier, the Samho Jewelry. Eight other pirates were killed in the operation.
The five captured pirates were brought to Busan, the home port of the Samho Jewelry, for trial. The ship’s captain was seriously wounded by shots apparently fired by one of the pirates during the raid but the ship’s 21 other crew members, eight of them South Korean, were rescued unharmed.
The appeals court also upheld the lower court’s heavy sentences for three other pirates — 15 years in jail for Aul Brallat and 13-year prison terms for Abdikhad Iman Ali and Abdullah Ali — for their role in hijacking the ship.
The court, however, reduced the lower court’s sentence for one pirate, Abdulahi Husseen Maxamuud, from 15 years in prison to 12.