Cargo Ship Vanishes

[beth]

Pirates in Europe? Cargo ship vanishes


LONDON - First the ship reported it had been attacked in waters off Sweden. Then it sailed with no apparent problems through one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. And then it disappeared.

The Arctic Sea, a Maltese-flagged cargo ship, was supposed to make port in Algeria with its cargo of timber on Aug. 4. More than a week later, there's no sign of the ship or its Russian crew.

Piracy has exploded off the coast of lawless Somalia — but could this be an almost unheard of case of sea banditry in European waters?

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the country's defense minister to take "all necessary measures" to find the missing cargo ship and, if necessary, to free its crew, the Kremlin said. Wives and other relatives of the crew members issued an appeal to the Russian government to carry out a full-scale rescue mission, using all of Russia's special services.

Attacked off Sweden?
The mystery began on July 24, when the 15 crew members of the Arctic Sea said they were tied up and beaten by a group of up to 10 men who boarded the ship off the Swedish island of Oland. The masked men identified themselves as police officers — but Swedish police said they hadn't been searching ships in that area.

Swedish police investigator Ingemar Isaksson said the crew then claimed that the men left the ship 12 hours later in a high-speed inflatable boat.

"We were very puzzled when we first heard about this," Isaksson said then. "I have never heard of anything like this in Swedish waters."

On July 28, the Arctic Sea made contact with British maritime authorities as it passed through the busy English Channel. The ship made a routine, mandatory report — saying who they were, where they were from, where they were going and what their cargo was. It appeared routine, said Mark Clark of Britain's Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

He said the agency is "extremely curious" about what happened to the ship.

"It's bizarre," he said. "There is no coastguard I know who can remember anything like this happening."

Portugal: It's not here
Where the ship was next spotted is uncertain. Russian media reports say the last contact was on July 30 when the ship was in the Bay of Biscay, and that it was later spotted by a Portuguese patrol plane, but there was no contact


But Portuguese Navy spokesman Commander Joao Barbosa said "we can guarantee that the ship is not in Portuguese waters nor did it ever pass through Portuguese waters."

The cargo was shipped by Finnish wood supplier Rets Timber, and is worth $1.84 million, the company said.

"We have no idea where the ship is," company managing director Kari Naumanen told the AP in Helsinki.

Experts are very concerned about the vessel and crew, but at the same time are wary of attributing the disappearance to armed bandits.

"There have been no attacks in European waters," said Pottengal Mukundan, director of the London-based International Maritime Bureau. "It's not the kind of area where pirates would find it easy to operate."

Nick Davis, the chief executive of the Merchant Maritime Warfare Centre, told the BBC that if anything had happened to the ship, cargo would have been found.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32387241/ns/world_news-europe/

[beth]

Mystery deepens over disappearing merchant ship
Thu Aug 13, 2009 11:03am EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The mystery surrounding a missing merchant ship deepened Thursday with the vessel's operator suggesting piracy and maritime experts suspecting foul play or even a secret cargo.

The Kremlin ordered Russian warships to join the hunt for the 4,000-tonne, 98-meter 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 4 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 Sovfracht maritime journal, said that 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," he told Reuters.

"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 Carre 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.

GHOST SHIP?

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 24.

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 Ladny was following a ship of a similar description in the Atlantic Ocean not far from Gibraltar.

"My view is that it is most likely that the vessel has been hijacked," Viktor Matveyev, director of the Finnish company Solchart, which operates the vessel, told Reuters. "We of course hope that everything is okay with the crew."

www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE57C17T20090813

[beth]

This looks to be getting more serious by the day. I'd have thought there'd be equipment on board to trace these cargo ships at sea.

[Dex]

Mystery Into Ship's Disappearance Intensifies After Report of Ransom Demand

The mystery of a missing ship embroiled in contradictory reports deepened Saturday, as investigators in Finland said a ransom demand was made for the freighter that vanished more than two weeks ago.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the request for money from the purported hijackers of the vessel, named the Arctic Sea, was legitimate.

Markku Ranta-Aho of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation told national YLE radio Saturday that "a ransom demand has been made and it was addressed to the shipping company which is based in Finland, and let's say it's a largish amount of money."

He did not give details.

The latest twist came after a Russian maritime Web site said that the Arctic Sea's tracking system had sent signals from the Bay of Biscay off the coast of France.

French Marines denied that was the case and echoed Friday's reports that said the ship is likely somewhere off West Africa around Cape Verde, about 2,000 miles south of Biscay.

The respected Sovfrakht maritime site said the ship's signal appeared on a tracking service about 4:30 a.m. EDT Saturday in the bay.

The site cautioned, however, that the Arctic Sea's Automatic Identification System equipment may not be on the ship itself anymore. The signal disappeared after about an hour, it said.

Hours later, French Marines spokesman Capt. Jerome Baroe said the signals in question had come from Russian warships that were heading from the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea.

Those ships apparently are different from the vessels that the Russian Navy dispatched this week to search for the Arctic Sea.

The Russian Navy won't release any new information about the whereabouts of the missing freighter. Its precise location remains unclear and is likely not known.

The freighter, carrying a load of timber, has been missing since July 28 after passing through the English Channel.

Crew members had reported that the ship was attacked in Swedish waters on July 24 by up to a dozen masked men, who they said tied them up, questioned them about drug trafficking, beat them and searched the freighter before leaving.

Such an attack would have been unusual in European waters, and raised questions because it was not reported until the freighter had passed through Britain's busy shipping lanes. There have been fears that some of the attackers might still be aboard, or that the ship came under attack a second time.

Radio messages from the freighter were later picked up along coasts of France and Portugal, but efforts to pinpoint the Arctic Sea's whereabouts have been difficult in the vast Atlantic and with no communication from the ship's 15-member Russian crew.

Cape Verde authorities said they had no new information Saturday, though Russia's ambassador to the country, Alexander Karpushin, said there was no confirmation the Arctic Sea had been found.

Baroe said it is "extremely probable" that the ship is off Cape Verde. He said the French Marines operational center in Brest had received no information indicating the ship is off the French coast, and so has launched no search in that area.

The Arctic Sea, which left from Finland on July 23, had been due to make port Aug. 4 in Algeria with its $1.8 million haul of timber.

The European Commission suggested the ship may have come under attack a second time off the Portuguese coast, spokesman Martin Selmayr said Friday.

Portugal's Foreign Ministry said, however, that the ship was never in Portuguese waters.

The ship's operator, Solchart Arkhangelsk, said it had no information about a possible second attack. It said the Arctic Sea's captain was 50-year-old Sergei Zaretsky, a veteran of such sea voyages, and the sailors were from the northwest Russian port city of Arkhangelsk.

Speculation on what might have happened to the ship has ranged from suspicions that it was carrying secret cargo — possibly narcotics — to theories about a commercial dispute. Security experts have been wary of attributing its disappearance to bandits, noting that piracy is almost unheard of in European waters.

"It would seem that these acts, such as they have been reported, have nothing in common with 'traditional' acts of piracy or armed robbery at sea," Selmayr said.


www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,539701,00.html?test=latestnews

[beth]

This is starting to look serious - ship's been missing over 2 weeks. FOX news seems to have the best coverage.

Search Intensifies for Missing Ship After Report of Ransom Demand

MOSCOW — Russia's envoy to NATO said Sunday that operations to find a missing freighter and its 15 Russian crew members are in full swing and he was optimistic of quick success.

Russian and European maritime officials are searching for the Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea and its $1.8 million cargo of timber. Dmitry Rogozin told state-run Vesti TV that Russian officials are in close contact with their NATO counterparts.

"The operation is ... unfolding positively. It's giving us reason to hope for success," Rogozin said.

The Finnish-owned Arctic Sea, which its owners said was carrying timber, set sail from Finland on July 23 headed for Algeria. The next day, the crew reported, about a dozen men boarded the ship near the Swedish island of Gotland, tied up the crew, beat them, said they were looking for drugs and then sped off in an inflatable craft.

The ship continued its journey but disappeared last month after passing through the English Channel.

The French Navy on Saturday said the ship was most likely near Cape Verde, off West Africa. Finnish authorities reported that the ship's owners had received a ransom demand, but they gave no further details.

/snip

www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,539869,00.html

[beth]

Who d'ya trust? This is turning into quite a riddle.


Russia insists ship hijackers sought ransom
Security experts doubt claim, speculate vessel was carrying illicit cargo


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.

Mysterious trail
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 $1.8 million.

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

'I believe this very little'
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, 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.

/snip

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32479147/ns/world_news-europe/