Russia Says Ship and Crew Are Found Safe

Russia Says Ship and Crew Are Found Safe
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: August 17, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/world/europe/18ship.html?ref=global-home


MOSCOW — A cargo ship missing since late last month with its Russian crew of 15 and $2 million worth of timber was located on Monday 300 miles off of West Africa’s Cape Verde, the Russia Defense Ministry reported.

The defense minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, said in remarks broadcast on Russian television that the crew was safe and was being questioned by Navy officials aboard an anti-submarine ship.

The fate of the missing ship, the Arctic Sea, has captivated Europeans from Madrid to Moscow since it vanished seemingly without a trace off the coast of Portugal in late July. It was not immediately clear how the ship remained undetected for so long, or how it was lost in the first place.

“The Arctic Sea was discovered at 1 a.m. Moscow time today, 300 miles off the Cape Verde islands,” Mr. Serdyukov said. “All crew members are alive, and they are feeling well. They were not under armed control,” he said.

There had been frequent unsubstantiated reports that the ship may have been hijacked. Finnish police over the weekend said that a ransom had been demanded, though it was not clear how credible the demand was.

“I think that in the next few hours we will explain in greater detail what happened, how and why communication was lost, why and how it changed course and any other nuances connected with this,” Mr. Serdyukov said. In the absence of hard facts, the mysterious disappearance has provoked sometimes wild speculation about piracy, mutiny, drug running or a new threat from Al Qaeda, among other theories.

One thing, however, has been certain all along, according to maritime analysts: the disappearance of a 4,000-ton vessel from heavily trafficked and intensely monitored European waters was practically unprecedented.

“This doesn’t really exist in our world at all,” said Jorgen Zachau, chief of the accident investigation unit at the Swedish Transport Agency. “Of course we are aware of hijackings and pirate attacks in other parts of the world, but a case like this in the Baltic Sea or the waters around Sweden has not happened since the 17th century.”

He added, however, that hijacking was not the only possible reason for the ship’s disappearance.

Whether or not modern-day pirates were involved, something strange befell the Arctic Sea, which was flying a Maltese flag, as it headed into the Atlantic on July 31 en route to a port in Algeria. That morning, the ship radioed a location off the coast of Portugal, and then vanished.

The disappearance followed an apparent raid on the ship several days earlier as it was traversing Swedish waters. On July 24, the ship’s captain radioed its Finnish-based operator, Sochart, claiming that 8 to 12 armed men had raided the vessel ostensibly to search for drugs. The crew was bound and blindfolded, and some were beaten, he said.

Then, for unknown reasons, the men left after 12 hours, according to the captain, speeding away in a small boat. The ship then continued along through the Baltic Sea and the Straits of Dover between France and Britain out into the Atlantic, where communication with the vessel was lost.