Greek authorities have seized a freighter carrying an undeclared shipment of weapons en route from Turkey to Libya, coast guard officials said yesterday.
A coast guard patrol boat raided the vessel on Tuesday, 20 nautical miles northeast of Crete. The freighter, with a crew of seven and which had sailed from the Turkish port of Iskenderun, was escorted to Heraklion port on the island.
The United Nations has imposed an embargo on weapons shipments to Libya, which is plagued by factional conflict.
“The ship’s crew is being questioned and the content of its containers will be checked,” a coast guard official said, declining to be named. The coast guard provided no further details of what kind of arms the freighter had on board, or its ownership.
A Turkish foreign ministry spokesman confirmed the cargo included weapons but said it was fully documented and was destined for the Sudanese police force. The vessel was also carrying building materials for Libya, he said.
“If investigations by the Greek authorities show that the consignment is going to receivers other than those stated in the documentation, and if that is shared with us, naturally measures could be taken,” foreign ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic said. He added that the company which owned the ship was registered in the Greek port city of Piraeus and that the vessel had begun its journey in Famagusta in northern Cyprus and had also passed through the Egyptian port of Alexandria. It came to Iskenderun on August 25 and left four days later, he said.
UN has imposed an embargo on weapons shipments to Libya
The vessel’s documentation indicated that it was supposed to travel on to Misurata and Tobruk in Libya, before travelling back to Beirut, Bilgic said. Libya is divided between two rival governments battling for control, leaving a security vacuum being exploited by migrant smugglers and Islamist militants.
Meanwhile Libya’s official government is struggling to woo oil majors in a bid to control oil revenue and force a rival Tripoli government into a UN peace deal because foreign clients are wary of breaking with the established state energy firm in the capital.
The battle over Libya’s oil resources is at the heart of a conflict between two governments and parliaments allied to a host of armed groups fighting for power four years after an uprising ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The internationally recognised government, based in the east since losing Tripoli a year ago, wants oil firms to discuss purchase contracts with its own officials instead of the state oil firm based in the capital, which is held by a rival group. So far foreign oil buyers have sought to ignore the conflict by continuing to pay through the state’s National Oil Corp (NOC) and the central bank in Tripoli, using a system in place for decades under Gaddafi. By appointing its own NOC management and inviting firms to a conference in Dubai, the east has escalated the dispute to put pressure on the rival government in Tripoli to agree on a national unity government, oil insiders and entrepreneurs say.
A rival assembly in Tripoli known as the General National Congress (GNC) has refused to sign a preliminary deal brokered by the United Nations, stymieing an accord Western powers say is the only way out of the country’s chaos.
“It is the only card left unplayed to force the GNC to reason for the best of Libya and accept a government of national unity,” said Husni Bey, a prominent entrepreneur. If the GNC won’t agree then the east wants to exert pressure by seizing oil revenues, Libya’s lifeline, he said.
Pressure has been building on eastern-based premier Abdullah al-Thinni, who is fighting irrelevance as his Cabinet works in a remote eastern city, issuing decisions ignored by Tripoli ministries reporting to the rival administration.