Panama seized a North Korean cargo ship it suspects was hiding missile equipment in a shipment of brown sugar from Cuba, after a standoff in which the ship's captain tried to slit his own throat.
The ship was stopped last week as it headed into the Panama Canal and authorities arrested the crew on Monday after finding undeclared missile-shaped objects - a potential violation of UN sanctions linked to North Korea’s nuclear program.
“We found containers which presumably contain sophisticated missile equipment. That is not allowed. The Panama canal is a canal of peace, not war,” Panama’s president Ricardo Martinelli told local radio yesterday.
Cuba said yesterday evening that the ship was loaded at one of its ports with 10,000 tons of sugar and 240 tons of “obsolete defensive weaponry,” according to a statement by the Cuban foreign ministry.
Cuba said the weapons were being sent back to North Korea for repair and included two anti-aircraft missile batteries, nine disassembled rockets, two MiG-21 fighter jets, and 15 MiG-21 engines, all Soviet-era military weaponry built in the middle of the last century.
In the statement, which was read out on the state TV evening news, Cuba said the weaponry was all required “to maintain our defensive capacity to preserve national sovereignty.”
It added, “Cuba maintains its commitment to peace including nuclear disarmament and international law.” Cuba has maintained warm relations with North Korea, including military and economic cooperation.
A high-level North Korean military delegation visited Cuba on July 1st, according to official Cuban media reports. A photo posted on Martinelli’s Twitter page showed a long, green missile-shaped object with a tapering, conical end inside the ship, which he said was bound for North Korea.
A security expert said pictures showed radar systems for Vietnam-era, Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles. The US state department praised Panama's decision to raid the ship, which it said had a history of involvement in drug smuggling, and warned the vessel would be violating United Nations Security Council resolutions by shipping arms.
The United Nations has imposed a raft of sanctions on North Korea, including strict regulations on arms shipments, for flouting measures aimed at curbing its nuclear weapons program.
Panama’s security minister, Jose Raul Mulino, said his government had stopped the ship last Wednesday and had so far found two containers of military equipment.
He did not specify whether the cargo contained actual missiles but said the search could last up to a week. When Panamanian officials began looking inside containers stuffed with over 250,000 100kg bags of brown sugar, the captain became violent, Mr Mulino said.
The captain, a North Korean citizen like the crew, tried to slit his throat with a knife, a police official said. The man was in hospital in stable condition, the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Ben Rhode, a North Korea security expert at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, suggested the captain’s suicide attempt might have been an effort to escape severe punishment by officials in North Korea for failing to carry out his mission.
All 35 members of the crew of the ship, which is called Chong Chon Gang, were arrested after resisting Panamanian orders and are now being questioned at Fort Sherman, a former US army base on the Atlantic end of the Panama Canal, the official added. Mulino, the security minister, said that Panama would consult with the United Nations to determine which agency could charge the crew members for smuggling illegal weapons.
An official at North Korea’s UN mission said nobody was available to comment on the ship.