A Libyan oil tanker with a cargo of fuel, reported to have been seized by rebels just outside Maltese territorial waters on Wednesday, reached Benghazi yesterday after having been given clearance to proceed by Nato.
The allied forces had been monitoring the 200-metre Cartegena, which belongs to a Libyan state-owned company, for two months, according to a spokesman.
It was carrying 300,000 litres of fuel and docked shortly before midday, AFP reported yesterday.
A Benghazi-based correspondent for the news agency said rebels aboard the ship confirmed they had seized it from Libyan government control between Malta and Tripoli. They claimed this took place with the help of Nato.
Nato, however, declined to comment on the report and neither would it confirm another one saying that the crew of a Nato ship had seen people being lowered down onto the boat from a helicopter.
“I cannot comment on that but I can confirm that Nato was monitoring the vessel. We are aware of the allegation (that it had been seized by rebels) but cannot confirm or deny it,” a Nato spokesman said.
A Nato official responsible for its Libya operation confirmed a Maltese vessel had been monitoring the tanker and escorted it outside Malta’s search and rescue area but added that “Nato did not have any contact with the Maltese ship”. The Times yesterday reported sources saying that an AFM patrol boat shadowed the tanker until it left the SAR region.
“We hailed the ship late on Wednesday afternoon and we were satisfied on the ship’s condition and therefore she was allowed to proceed,” the official said, adding that hailing meant Nato communicated with the ship’s captain.
He said Nato officials asked the ship’s commander a series of specific questions and were satisfied enough to allow it to sail on to Benghazi.
“We did not board this ship. We hailed it, and nothing was wrong according to us, so it was cleared to enter port,” the official, based at the Nato Libya Operations Centre in Naples, said.
Sources told The Times on Wednesday that the Cartagena was approached by an unlit Libyan-flagged tug boat as it lay at Hurd Bank.
The Cartagena belongs to General National Maritime Transport, the state-owned shipping firm controlled by Muammar Gaddafi’s son Hannibal. According to the Petroleum Economist, it had spent a month anchored off Malta while the Libyan government tried to come up with another means of unloading it.
In early July, it headed for the port of Annaba in Algeria. But Algerian authorities stopped the tanker from berthing.
Asked how such a vessel could go unnoticed for so long, the spokesman said Nato had been monitoring it for the past two months.
Meanwhile, the Nato official confirmed that Libyan government forces had fired a missile towards an Italian warship in the Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday, missing it by a short distance. He, however, repeated Nato’s denial that Libya had ever fired any missile in Malta’s direction, as claimed recently in a local paper.