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Arctic Sea crew, hijackers arrive in Moscow
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-20 20:06
MOSCOW: The crew and the suspected hijackers of the Arctic Sea arrived in Moscow on Thursday, news agencies reported, days after the freighter was found by Russian naval forces off West Africa. Three Russian air force planes arrived at a military airport outside Moscow from the Cape Verde islands, Interfax and ITAR-Tass said. It was unclear why there were three planes and no other details were given; defense officials could not be reached to confirm the reports.
Russian TV broadcast footage Thursday of the Arctic Sea crew on the Russian navy frigate Ladnyi, which found the freighter on Monday, weeks after the ship mysteriously went missing, prompting an international search and sparking intense speculation about its fate. Men identified as Arctic Sea crew members told Vesti-24 television that the ship, which was carrying euro1.3 million ($1.8 million) worth of timber, was seized in the Baltic Sea by armed gunmen. One unidentified man told Vesti a crew member sent a text message saying the ship had been hijacked, but the hijackers then forced the captain at gunpoint to report that everything was normal on board. Vesti also showed men it identified as the suspected hijackers in handcuffs being led by Russian marines to buses on the Cape Verde island of Sal. Russia has said four of the detained hijackers were citizens of Estonia, while the others were from Russia and Latvia. Officials have said the hijackers demanded a ransom and threatened to blow up the freighter if their demands were not met. But Russian and European maritime experts have cast doubt on the ransom reports and speculation has grown that the freighter was carrying undeclared or even contraband cargo, possibly weapons or drugs, suspicions fueled by the thin trickle of information from the Russian government. A Russian insurance company, Renaissance Insurance, said it received a ransom demand for $1.5 million on August 3. The ship left a Finnish port on July 21 with a crew of 15 Russians. More than a week later, Swedish police said they received 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. A Swedish police spokeswoman, Linda Widmark, said Swedish authorities last had contact with the ship on July 31, in a brief telephone call with someone who identified themselves as the captain. "It was a very short phone call, it was cut off, but it seemed as if everything was normal," she told The Associated Press. The ship had been due to dock in Algeria on August 4. The Arctic Sea was 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. Yevgeny Limarev, a former Russian security agent, said the Arctic Sea was likely at the center of a struggle between competing Russian business and Kremlin clans, and the Kremlin was forced to intervene to prevent an international scandal. |
