MOSCOW, (Reuters) – Russia said yesterday it had arrested eight people for hijacking a merchant ship off the Swedish coast and diverting it to the Atlantic Ocean — while maritime authorities pretended they had lost track of it.
Press reports said the Maltese-registered, Russian-crewed vessel had disappeared from radar screens in a maritime mystery, but the Malta Maritime Authority said on Tuesday that the Arctic Sea had “never really disappeared”.
The arrests ended weeks of official silence over the ship and its $1.3 million cargo of timber, giving rise to speculation about a secret cargo and involvement in espionage.
“Eight people — citizens of Estonia, Latvia and Russia — were arrested during an operation to free the ship,” Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov told President Dmitry Medvedev in remarks posted on the Kremlin site www.kremlin.ru
“An investigation established that on July 24 these people boarded the Arctic Sea and, threatening with weapons, ordered the crew to change the route. The ship then moved on the route dictated by the hijackers towards Africa, with its navigation equipment turned off.”
“This was an act of piracy,” Serdyukov told reporters.
