MOSCOW – The mystery surrounding a missing merchant ship has deepened with the vessel’s operator suggesting piracy and maritime experts suspecting foul play or even a secret cargo.
The Kremlin has ordered Russian warships to join the hunt for the 4,000-tonne, 98-metre bulk carrier Arctic Sea, whose fate has baffled maritime authorities across Europe and North Africa.
The Maltese-registered vessel, carrying a $1.3-million cargo of timber, was supposed to have docked on August 4th in the Algerian port of Bejaia. It never arrived and is thought to have last made contact from the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of France.
Mikhail Boytenko, editor of Russia's respected Sovfrachtmaritime journal, said the ship may have been carrying a secret cargo unknown to the vessel's owners or operators.
“I think there was probably some sort of secret cargo on this vessel, not criminal but secret, and a third party of some sort did not want the cargo to get to another party so this highly sophisticated operation was cooked up.
“I don’t think that it was pirates who took this vessel but it really smells of some sort of state involvement. This is real cloak-and-dagger stuff, like a [John] le Carré novel.”
A wave of piracy has hit shipping off Somalia and an international naval force patrols its coast in an effort to protect merchant vessels, but a hijacking in European waters would be almost unprecedented in modern times.
“There has not been a so-called incident of this kind around in Europe for a very long time,” said Jim Davis, chairman of London-based industry group the International Maritime Industries Forum.
“It is a unique incident so far in European waters.”
Piracy is rare in European waters with only a couple of recent incidents involving private yachts in the Mediterranean.
Concerns over the safety of the 15-member Russian crew were raised after the Malta Maritime Authority said it received reports the ship had been boarded by armed men in masks posing as anti-drugs police in Swedish waters on July 24th.
Swedish authorities said none of its law enforcement agencies had been involved. Crew members were assaulted, tied, gagged and blindfolded and some were seriously hurt, Malta said.
Russia's navy denied a report on state television that the frigate Ladnywas following a ship of a similar description in the Atlantic Ocean not far from Gibraltar.
Swedish police said an investigator had spoken briefly to the crew on July 31st when the vessel was in the Atlantic after sailing through the Dover Strait between Britain and France. An electronic signal showing its location has been turned off.
The head of division at Sweden’s national crime police, Maria Lonegard, said the ship had behaved erratically in the Baltic Sea. She played down fears of piracy, saying a written statement about events on the ship had been communicated from the vessel to the Finnish operator and then to Swedish police, she said.
Russia’s domestic intelligence service, the FSB, was helping to investigate the mystery and its agents were at the offices of Solchart Arkhangelsk, which is listed as the ship’s owner, Russian media reported. – (Reuters)