In the space of three months, there have been two incidents of arrest warrants issued by Maltese courts against foreign ships failing to be effected. To misquote Oscar Wilde: “To lose one vessel, Prime Minister, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.”
A few months ago, the tanker MT Atlantik was issued with an arrest warrant by the Maltese courts following a request made by a Liberian-registered company, Shannon. The tanker was heading to Malta for overnight refuelling.
The court action was carefully timed. Shannon’s lawyers in Malta told the court usher responsible for delivering the document to the Maltese authorities – Valletta Port Control, the Police Commissioner and the Director General of Customs – not to do so before instructed.
But the law of mess-ups and unintended consequences took over. It took the court usher another 90 minutes to deliver the warrant to the three authorities because Valletta and its surrounding approaches were choked with traffic and some roads were closed because of May 1 celebrations.
On April 30 at 7.15pm, the Valletta port authorities ordered the Atlantik to go to an area off Mellieha to refuel. The ship’s captain initially appeared to obey the order. Seven minutes later, however, he switched off the vessel’s tracking system, changed course and headed out of Maltese waters.
At 7.56pm the port authority requested the AFM to send a patrol boat to intercept the vessel, but four minutes later the Atlantik had already slipped out of Maltese territorial waters.
After another 11 minutes, the AFM informed the port authority that they did not have a ship available to intercept the tanker, mainly, it turns out, because the Maritime Squadron was busy monitoring the EU membership 10th anniversary celebrations in Grand Harbour.
Last week, a 100-metre long cargo vessel weighing over 5,000 tons, the Madra, also managed to evade two arrest warrants issued by the Maltese courts.
The ship’s captain simply switched off the vessel’s tracking system, lifted anchor and made away in the direction of Beirut before the AFM could intercept it.
There are elements of the Keystone Cops about both affairs. While details of why the Madra escaped are sketchy, there has been a full report into the Atlantik incident by the former AFM Commander, Brigadier Carmel Vassallo.
In this, he highlighted the serious issues at stake and important lessons to be learnt for the future. It seems very likely that similar comments might apply in respect of the Madra incident.
Strangely, Brigadier Vassallo’s report holds nobody responsible, although unusually, the AFM does not come out of this incident unblemished. Even though the monitoring of the Atlantik by the AFM had started at 7.45pm, the formal request for support from the AFM by the port authority 11 minutes later was in any case left too late for them to mount an interception of the vessel. A similar tardiness in alerting the AFM appears to have occurred in the Madra incident too, because they again failed to make an interception.
Perhaps the key lesson to emerge from these bungled arrests is the need for such operations to be meticulously planned beforehand, involving only the four or so key authorities on a confidential basis to prevent a leak. In both cases it would appear events, poor communications or slap-dash oversight – as often happens when matters are not properly planned – took over.
Both represent sorry sagas that reflects well on nobody, least of all Malta.