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Cruelbreed
08-12-2009, 03:11 PM
Russian Navy leads hunt for missing cargo ship



Story Highlights
Arctic Sea was carrying a 6,500-ton cargo of timber from Finland to Algeria
Last known contact with missing vessel was on July 31
Vessel failed to arrive on schedule in Algeria in August 4
Russia sends navy vessels authorized to use force to hunt for ship

LONDON, England (CNN) -- An international search operation was underway Wednesday for a cargo ship which vanished after being involved in what is feared to be an unprecedented incident of piracy in European waters.
The Russian-crewed Arctic Sea, carrying a 6,500-ton cargo of timber from Finland to Algeria, was last heard of nearly two weeks ago when it passed through the English Channel, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.
Russia said naval vessels authorized to use force were now hunting the vessel backed by "space-based" detection systems.
The Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea is claimed to have been briefly hijacked off Sweden when raiders posing as drug enforcement officers tied up, gagged and blindfolded the crew, causing several injuries, and searched the vessel.
It then apparently vanished after a last known contact on July 31, failing to make its scheduled arrival in north Africa on August 4.
Experts say acts of piracy are unheard of in heavily-policed European waters, with maritime crime largely restricted to areas such as Somalia in Africa where governments have little or no control over their ports.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has instructed the country's Defense Minister Anatoly Serduykov to "take all necessary measures to locate, monitor and, if necessary, to free the missing vessel," a statement said.
Maltese maritime officials said several governments were now trying to track down the ship.
According to Swedish police and the Maltese Maritime Authority (MMA), the Arctic Sea's crew said its troubles began on July 24 when a group of between eight and 12 men boarded at 3 a.m., occupying the vessel for 12 hours.
According to witness accounts, they restrained the 15-man crew and questioned them about drug trafficking before locking them in their quarters. http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/img/2.0/mosaic/tabs/video.gifWatch account of crew's claimed ordeal » (http://cnn.site.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Russian+Navy+leads+hunt+for+missing+cargo+sh ip+-+CNN.com&expire=-1&urlID=408490772&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2009%2FWORLD%2Feuro pe%2F08%2F12%2Fpirates.europe%2Findex.html&partnerID=211911#cnnSTCVideo)
"During their stay onboard, the members of the crew were allegedly assaulted, tied, gagged and blindfolded and some of them were seriously injured," an MMA statement said.
Swedish police spokeswoman Maria Lönegård said during the suspected hijack, the vessel's radar and satellite systems were off-line for two hours, during which it was witnessed performing "extreme maneuvers."
Since the crew believed they had been boarded by a genuine law enforcement agency, no police complaint was initially made, and the Arctic Sea continued on its way. Details eventually reached police through diplomatic channels.
Lönegård said Swedish police spoke with the Arctic Sea's captain on July 31, when the ship was believed to be off the coast of France. This is believed to be the last known contact with the vessel.
Earlier, on July 28, the ship had made contact with British coastguard -- a standard procedure as it passed through the busy waters of the English Channel -- but reported nothing untoward.
Russia's Defense Ministry said on it's Web site that Black Sea Fleet patrol ship Ladny was heading the search operation and had Wednesday passed through the Strait of Gibraltar en route to the Atlantic.
While piracy (http://topics.cnn.com/topics/pirates) levels have recently increased off the coast of East Africa, incidents in European waters are unheard of, according to UK maritime experts.
"Attacks on ships are extremely rare, basically they don't happen," said Jeremy Harrison of the British Chamber of Shipping.
The International Maritime Bureau in London, which tracks ship piracy worldwide, said it did not believe the Arctic Sea had fallen into the hands of pirates.
"We are not going to classify this as a piracy event, mainly because of the location and circumstance," he said. The bureau is unaware of any piracy in recent memory in the waters off Sweden," spokesman Cyrus Mody said.
Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the Russian Maritime Bulletin Web site said he believed the vessel was carrying "some kind of secret cargo" which made it attractive to potential hijackers.

ghost
08-12-2009, 03:23 PM
Interesting. I hope everything is okay.

Scott
08-12-2009, 03:43 PM
yeah it was in this mornings paper here, this happened 2 weeks ago, they fear its reached Algeria.

GTFPDQ
08-12-2009, 05:51 PM
So some Somalis navigated the Suez canal, rowed their way through the med, stopped off in Algeria for some R&R, sneaked passed Gibralter, got near the english channel and found a Russian crewed merchant ship and nicked it.

WTF is going on, the ship gets grabbed and the crew beaten up and then get on their way again only to disappear.

My head hurts.

Cruelbreed
08-12-2009, 09:41 PM
Pretty large ship to be getting lost lol

Reactor-Axe-Man
08-12-2009, 11:32 PM
That's really interesting. Which is to say, the Russian Navy gets very concerned about a ship carrying... timber? And authorizes the use of force? Is this a search and rescue op or something more sinister (read: with the potential to embarrass ol' Pooty Poot)?

nastyleg
08-13-2009, 04:06 AM
That's really interesting. Which is to say, the Russian Navy gets very concerned about a ship carrying... timber? And authorizes the use of force? Is this a search and rescue op or something more sinister (read: with the potential to embarrass ol' Pooty Poot)?

my sentamints exactly

Cruelbreed
08-13-2009, 12:33 PM
That's really interesting. Which is to say, the Russian Navy gets very concerned about a ship carrying... timber? And authorizes the use of force? Is this a search and rescue op or something more sinister (read: with the potential to embarrass ol' Pooty Poot)?

ohh smart man, inquisitive.

dmaxx3500
08-13-2009, 10:34 PM
something smells fishy

ghost
08-13-2009, 10:38 PM
That's really interesting. Which is to say, the Russian Navy gets very concerned about a ship carrying... timber? And authorizes the use of force? Is this a search and rescue op or something more sinister (read: with the potential to embarrass ol' Pooty Poot)?


Yeah. Definitely something going on....

dmaxx3500
08-13-2009, 10:48 PM
could there be nukes or arms been on board ?,alot of ships are mislabeled

dmaxx3500
08-14-2009, 11:18 PM
somebody? found the ship today in the atlantic off africa,it didn't say who found it or if any crew was still on it,,this just gets better every time they give out more info

bobdina
08-18-2009, 11:12 AM
updated 7:43 a.m. ET, Tues., Aug 18, 2009

MOSCOW - Russia's navy arrested eight men accused of hijacking the Arctic Sea freighter near Sweden and forcing the crew to sail to West Africa, the defense minister said Tuesday.

Anatoly Serdyukov said the suspected hijackers were detained by the naval vessel that found the Russian-crewed freighter Monday off Cape Verde, thousands of miles from the Algerian port where it was supposed to dock two weeks ago.

Serdyukov spoke to reporters at an air show outside Moscow.e told President Dmitry Medvedev earlier Tuesday that the suspected hijackers — citizens of Estonia, Latvia and Russia — were arrested without a shot being fired, state news agencies said.

There was still no information on why they allegedly seized the Arctic Sea, an 18-year-old ship with a cargo of timber worth only euro1.3 million ($1.8 million).

The 15 crew members were safe and had been taken aboard the Russian naval vessel for questioning, Serdyukov said.

The Arctic Sea sailed from the Finnish port of Pietarsaari on July 21. On July 30, Swedish police said the ship's owner had reported that the crew claimed the vessel was boarded by masked men on July 24 near the Swedish island of Gotland. The invaders reportedly had tied up the crew, beat them, claimed they were looking for drugs, then sped off about 12 hours later in an inflatable craft.

Tracking device
Serdyukov reportedly said the hijackers boarded the freighter under the pretext that there was a problem with their inflatable craft. The hijackers, who were armed, then forced the crew to change course and turned off the Arctic Sea's navigation equipment, he was quoted as saying.

By the time the Swedish report of the attack had emerged, the ship had already passed through the English Channel, where it made its last known radio contact on July 28. Signals from the ship's tracking device were picked up off France's coast the next day, but that was the last known trace of it until Monday.

Serdyukov said the ship were found about 300 miles away from the island nation of Cape Verde.

The disappearance of the 98-meter freighter perplexed experts and officials across Europe, with speculation about what happened ranging from its being seized by pirates to involvement in a murky commercial dispute.

Reactor-Axe-Man
08-19-2009, 11:08 PM
FWIW, there is a Russian journalist who reports that something hinky (http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/08/19/world/international-us-ship-russia.html) was going on with the ship before it left for Finland.

The official version of events was questioned by Yulia Latynina, a leading Russian opposition journalist and commentator.

"The Arctic Sea was carrying something, not timber and not from Finland, that necessitated some major work on the ship," she wrote in the Moscow Times newspaper on Wednesday.

During two weeks of repair works in the Russian port of Kaliningrad just before the voyage, the ship's bulkhead was dismantled so something very large could be loaded, she wrote.

"To put it plainly: The Arctic Sea was carrying some sort of anti-aircraft or nuclear contraption intended for a nice, peaceful country like Syria, and they were caught with it," she said.

I'm not sure what to believe on this, but it certainly puts the Russian Navy's response in perspective.

ghost
08-19-2009, 11:49 PM
This is interesting.

Why hasn't anything been done about this sort of thing? Russia is supplying Iran with weaponry, and Iran supplies insurgents in Iraq, and has ties with Hezbollah.... Russia supplies Venezuela, and Huge Chavez is announcing that he will "prepare for war" against the US bases in Colombia.... China supplies the Sudanese government in Darfur with weapons and equipment in exchange for oil, while they use that same equipment to commit mass genocide....

Is nothing being done because the ties are too fragile? What is the reason for this?

bobdina
08-20-2009, 11:42 AM
By David Nowak - The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Aug 19, 2009 11:57:07 EDT

MOSCOW — A Russian Defense Ministry official insisted Wednesday that the hijackers of the Arctic Sea had demanded a ransom and threatened to blow up the Russian-crewed freighter if their demands were not met, state news agencies reported.

The ship’s mysterious disappearance last month is the focus of an international investigation. Some security experts said they suspect the claims may be an effort to dress up a smuggling or trafficking operation as a piracy incident.

The suspicions have been fed by the limited information available from the government and the manner in which it has been released.

Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov announced earlier that the Russian navy had reached the ship off West Africa on Monday and arrested eight suspected hijackers without a shot being fired. Further details were provided Wednesday by state news agencies, citing an unnamed ministry official.

“Crew members confirm that a ransom demand was made by the hijackers and if their demands were not met the hijackers threatened to blow up the vessel,” the ministry official reportedly said.

The crew said the hijackers were armed but threw their weapons overboard when the Russian naval frigate approached, the reports said.

Ministry spokesman Yuri Ivanov said he was unaware of the statements made to the state news agencies through other channels.

The timber-loaded Arctic Sea and its 15 Russian crew members left a Finnish port on July 21. More than a week later, Swedish police said they were investigating a report that masked men had raided the ship in the Baltic Sea and beaten the crew before speeding off 12 hours later in their inflatable craft.

The Maltese-flagged freighter gave no indication of any difficulties or change in its route during radio contact while passing through the English Channel on July 28. Signals from the ship’s tracking device were picked up off the French coast late the next day, but that was the last confirmed trace of it until Monday.

The ship had been due to dock in Algeria on Aug. 4 with its cargo of timber worth €1.3 million ($1.8 million).

A Russian insurance company, Renaissance Insurance, said it received a ransom demand for $1.5 million Aug. 3.

Company vice president Vladimir Dushin said the call came from a man speaking English who said he was an intermediary for the hijackers.

“He said if we informed the media or the authorities they would starting shooting the hostages and double the ransom,” Dushin told The Associated Press. He said the man used a voice-changing technology to conceal his identity.

“Of course, we didn’t pay anything, and we gave all the information to the relevant authorities,” he said.

Finnish investigators also have said there was a ransom demand.

“We have evidence that a ransom note was made to the ship’s operator,” Detective Superintendent Rabbe von Hertzen told The Associated Press in Helsinki.

“According to the information we gathered during our preliminary investigation and the subsequent information we have received from Russian authorities, yes, it was a hijacking,” said von Hertzen, who heads the Finnish group of investigators working together with their counterparts from Sweden and Malta.

But some maritime and security experts said they doubted the ransom claim.

“This business about the ransom, I believe this very little,” said Mikhail Voitenko, the editor of the online Maritime Bulletin-Sovfracht.

He and others have speculated that the freighter was carrying an undeclared cargo, possibly weapons or drugs.

Voitenko said he did not suspect the Russian government of smuggling; it was more likely a well-connected business clan.

Tarmo Kouts, a former commander of the Estonian defense forces, said Russia’s version of the hijacking raised many questions.

“This whole story looks so far-fetched that it would be naive to believe Russia’s official version,” Kouts was quoted as saying Wednesday in the Estonian newspaper Postimees.

The Arctic Sea is operated by the Finnish company Solchart, which has Russian management and a sister company providing technical support in the Russian city of Arkhangelsk, the home of all 15 crew members.

Ivan Boiko, the deputy director of Solchart Arkhangelsk, said he expected the ship’s timber to be delivered to the Algerian port of Bejaia by a new crew.

A spokesman for the port in Bejaia said the Arctic Sea was expected in the coming days and security measures were being stepped up for the ship’s arrival. The spokesman was not authorized to be named for security reasons.

Boiko said he didn’t know the current location of the ship, which was under the Russian navy’s control.

Russia said four of the detained hijackers were citizens of Estonia, while the others were from Russia and Latvia.