Russia charges suspect pirates

Russia has charged the eight suspects in the hijacking of the Maltese-registered cargo ship Arctic Sea with kidnapping and piracy, the same day it accepted a request by the Maltese authorities to send over investigators.

In line with its rights and obligations as the flag state, Malta, through the maritime authority, asked the Russian authorities to allow its representatives to participate in the ongoing investigation, the Maritime Security Committee said.

The MMA has to certify whether the ship is still seaworthy. However, when asked, officials did not specify whether such investigation would also enter into the merits of what cargo the ship may have been carrying at the time of the hijack.

The Maritime Security Committee, set up to investigate the circumstances surrounding the Arctic Sea, said the Russian authorities would be providing it with all the information regarding the case.

"The committee has been in continuous contact with the Russian authorities as part of its own investigations," the MMA said.

It did not specify when the Maltese investigators would be going to Russia where the ship will berth sometime early next week.

Mystery still surrounds the ship's month-long absence and a leading Russian tabloid this week quoted unnamed security sources saying the ship was smuggling arms and that the hijackers were stooges hired by the intelligence service of an EU member state to intercept it.

Russian officials have said that a preliminary search when the ship was recaptured off the Cape Verde coast in the Atlantic turned up nothing suspicious. They said a more thorough search would be conducted when it arrived in the Russian port of Novorossiisk. The crew and hijackers arrived in Russia last week under heavy escort and the alleged perpetrators were taken to a maximum security prison for interrogation.

Agence France-Presse reported yesterday that the 11 crew members were not being allowed out of Moscow and reportedly could not discuss the events with their families on the phone.

According to Russia, 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 as scheduled.

Russian warships eventually caught up with the merchant ship in the Atlantic Ocean off the Cape Verde islands and eight people - nationals of Estonia, Latvia and Russia - were arrested on suspicion of hijacking the vessel.

However, experts have questioned why the hijackers would take so much time and risk over a relatively insignificant cargo, seizing the ship in the Baltic Sea in one of Europe's busiest shipping lanes.