No word on probe into Arctic Sea

A top government official would not say when an investigation to determine the seaworthiness of the Arctic Sea cargo vessel would be held by the Malta Maritime Authority after the ship was allegedly hijacked.

John Gatt, the permanent secretary at the Investments Ministry, who also heads the maritime security committee set up to monitor the ship after it was seized, insisted that the committee was "not in a position to provide further information".

In its last media update the Malta Maritime Authority said it wanted to ensure that the Maltese-flagged, Russian-owned vessel was granted "safe berth to allow for the required investigations into the seaworthiness of the ship".

But Mr Gatt would not say whether the authority had already dispatched an investigative team or whether the investigation would also determine the type of cargo the ship was carrying at the time of the hijack.

Speculation is rife in some sections of the Russian media that the ship might not have been carrying timber but an arms shipment, perhaps even some sort of nuclear device.

Russian government officials quoted by Reuters yesterday dismissed suggestions that the ship was carrying a shipment of weapons. They also said the vessel would be towed to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk for "further investigative measures".

The crew and alleged hijackers arrived in Russia yesterday and the perpetrators were taken to a maximum security prison for interrogation. Crew family members did not comment on the events.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said four crew members stayed aboard the vessel which is anchored off the Atlantic island of Cape Verde.

Russia says the ship was hijacked on July 24 off the coast of Sweden and the hijackers then threatened to blow it up if their ransom demands (said to hover around a relatively puny $1.5 million) were not met.

After heading through the English Channel in late July, radio contact was apparently lost and the 4,000-tonne ship did not deliver its timber cargo to the Algerian port of Bejaia on August 4.

Maritime authorities spoke of the Arctic Sea as having disappeared, leading to speculation that the ship may have been carrying some sort of secret cargo that had been intercepted by spies.

Only after the Russian navy boarded the ship did the Malta Maritime Authority say it had never really gone missing and that maritime powers had been tracking it for days.

Russian warships caught up with the merchant ship in the Atlantic Ocean off the Cape Verde islands on Monday and Moscow said eight people - nationals of Estonia, Latvia and Russia - had been arrested for hijacking the vessel.

ksansone@timesofmalta.com