NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The scrawny teenager promised his mother comfort and riches beyond her wildest dreams.

It was a steamy day at their crumbling home in central Somalia with no running water or electricity, and the mother’s face glistened with sweat after a morning of selling milk. He looked up from the bowl of rice she had just served him and said: “I am saddened by the way we live,” the mother recalled.

She said her son often spoke of the American dream, longing to cross the seas and strike it rich in the richest country in the world. He promised he would give her anything she wanted, that she would no longer live in their one-room shack, where water for cooking and bathing has to be hauled in on the backs of donkeys.

“I will take you wherever you want,” the teenager said. “You will no longer live under this boiling sun.”

Earlier this week, Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse arrived in the country he aspired to for so long. But he sleeps in a cramped jail cell in New York City, awaiting trial on charges of piracy that could keep him behind bars for life.

On the morning of April 8, Muse was the first of four pirates to scale the walls of a US-flagged ship as it sailed off Somalia’s treacherous coast, and fired a shot at the captain, Richard Phillips. According to the criminal complaint filed against him, Muse acted as the leader, demanding in broken English that the engines of the Maersk Alabama be stopped. A gun strapped to his skinny frame, he asked for the telephone number of the ship’s owner to begin the multimillion-dollar negotiation for the vessel’s release.

It marked the first armed takeover of a US-flagged vessel in more than three decades, and when he realised the ship was American, he whooped with joy.

“He was surprised he was on a US ship,” said crew member A T M “Zahid” Reza, among the first to encounter Muse. “He kept asking, ‘You all come from America?’ Then he claps and cheers and smiles. He caught himself a big fish.”

Reza said Muse was friendly and smiling at first. He ordered the crew to lower a ladder to the small skiff below where the other pirates were waiting, and they scampered up. The majority of the Alabama’s 20-man crew had taken refuge inside the ship’s safe room, a locked compartment in the vessel, and Muse told Phillips to radio his men and tell them to come out, according to crew members.

They waited and only one of the other sailors came out of hiding. Muse was told that the others were afraid to surrender as long as the pirates were armed – and so the teen put down his gun. He then took off with a flashlight to explore the ship, at one point shining his light on one of the crew members who was hiding in a darkened engine room.

During a struggle that ensued, Reza stabbed Muse in the hand with a knife. They were able to overpower Muse, tying his hands, according to the complaint. They then took him to the safe room.

Ken Quinn, the ship’s second mate, was hiding inside the safe room when they came in with the tied-up teenager. In the tense hours that followed, Quinn dressed the teenager’s wounds. He also retied his hands after Muse complained that the bonds were digging into his skin.

At more than 120 degrees, the safe room was boiling, and Quinn was afraid Muse was about to go into shock.

As the hours passed, Muse begged for mercy. He also begged for his life. He talked about how it was his dream to go to America. At one point, he turned to Quinn and said in broken English: “I want to go to America. Can you fix it? I want to go. Can I go?” Quinn recalled.