Russia Arrests 8 Suspected Cargo Ship Hijackers
By VOA News
18 August 2009
Russia's defense minister says his country's forces have arrested eight people suspected of hijacking the cargo ship that disappeared after leaving the English Channel late last month.
Russian news agencies on Tuesday quoted Anatoly Serdyukov as saying the suspects are being detained on the naval ship that located the missing freighter Arctic Sea.
He said the suspects, who include citizens of Russia, Estonia and Latvia, were arrested without a shot being fired.
There has been speculation about why the freighter, which was reportedly transporting a load of timber worth less than $2 million, was hijacked.
Russian political analyst Yulia Latynina said she believes the incident involved some kind of "highly illegal" cargo - possibly weapons being sold to a Middle Eastern country or nuclear components.
She said she thinks there was a disagreement between the parties concerned that may have involved "special services."
Serdyukov said the eight boarded the freighter July 24 in Swedish territorial waters and demanded at gunpoint that the crew follow their orders.
The hijackers then ordered the ship to head toward the south Atlantic and switched off navigation equipment.
On Monday, Serdyukov said the ship had been found off the coast of the West African country of Cape Verde. The defense minister said its 15 Russia crew members were safe and transferred to a Russian naval vessel.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev last week ordered the country's military to take all necessary measures to find the Maltese-registered freighter.
Concerns rose when the freighter failed to arrive in the Algerian port of Bejaia on August 4 as scheduled.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.
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