The Daily Press is reporting that five suspected Somali pirates were convicted in a federal courthouse in Norfolk, Va., on Wednesday in an attack on a Norfolk-based frigate last spring. The five men, charged in the April attack on the USS Nicholas, face mandatory life sentences after being found guilty on 14 counts. Defense attorneys for the suspected pirates said that their clients are innocent fishermen who were abducted and forced into piracy under threat of death. The defendants were accused of shooting at the USS Nicholas, which was part of an international flotilla combating piracy in the seas off Somalia. They all confessed to the crime but said they were forced by Somali pirates to participate. Capturing fisherman and making them work as pirates is not unusual in Somalia. Unfortunately, that doesn't matter here because they were still part of the attack. This is the first piracy prosecution to go to trial in the U.S. since the Civil War. This story is developing.
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