The Hijacking of Cargo Ship 'Arctic Sea'

[ref]

Any takes on the Arctic Sea story? Many conspiracy theories surround the ship's journey.

The ship left the coast of Finland in late June, and was soon said to be hijacked. Then for a moment it was thought the hijackers had left the vessel. In the Atlantic the vessel disappeared. Later it was told again that the vessel had been hijacked. A ransom was demanded, the hijackers threatened they would start killing the crew. There were 8 hijackers and 15 crew members. The cargo consisted of Scandinavian wood worth 1.3 million euros. A couple of days ago Russian military took over the ship and arrested the hijackers. It was a large rescue operation involving authorities from Finland, Sweden, Malta and Russia.

This is CNN's take on the conspiracy theories surrounding this story:

Fueling the Cold War-style conspiracies was Moscow's involvement: The Kremlin said the RussianNavy, backed by space hardware, was in hot pursuit of the Arctic Sea. Sightings of Russian attack submarines off the U.S. coast last week have only helped to fan the flames.

However fanciful, these theories did at least attempt to explain why anyone -- whether hijackers, pirates, or spies -- would be interested in a 17-year-old Turkish-built, Maltese-flagged vessel with a rather mundane payload of Scandinavian wood.

An apparent ransom demand, which Finnish police said had been issued to shipping company Solchart Management, suggested some motive for abducting the vessel, but did little to clarify the events since the ship was reportedly boarded by hijackers on July 24.

After that incident off the coast of Sweden, according to a confusing array of sightings and reports, the Arctic Sea sailed through the English Channel, was possibly hijacked a second time off Portugal, vanished on July 31, was sighted off the Cape Verde islands on Friday and then blipped back onto computer screens in the Bay of Biscay for a fleeting moment on Saturday.

There is the real possibility that much of the mystery surrounding the ship is as a result of a media blackout imposed by military and law enforcement agencies to protect the lives of the 15 crewmen as they attempted to take out or negotiate with those behind an extortion bid.

...

Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the Russian Maritime Bulletin, told CNN he believed the Arctic Sea must have been carrying a "secret cargo", to attract such attention, however he would not elaborate on its nature.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/08/17/russia.ship.conspiracies/index.html

 

[Stellafane]

...However fanciful, these theories did at least attempt to explain why anyone -- whether hijackers, pirates, or spies -- would be interested in a 17-year-old Turkish-built, Maltese-flagged vessel with a rather mundane payload of Scandinavian wood.

I once took a trip, or should I say, it once took me.
We carried a load, isn’t it good, Scandinavian Wood?
We all left port on the good cargo ship Arctic Sea
And soon we discovered we’d sailed straight into destiny.
Soon pirates came by, “Yo ho ho ho! Heave to or die!”
Then two weeks most frantic, we zigged and zagged across the Atlantic.
We finally got rescued by Russians just off Cape Verde
(Though “rescued” and “Russians” seems awful ironic to me).
Some will think this may be a big mystery, a sort of CT
Though I don’t know why they should – ‘twas all a load of Scandinavian Wood.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

*admires Stellafane*

Why, I wonders, does it need to always be
Some sort of dark conspiracy?
It could have been simple piracy,
Or prosaic explanation we don't exactly see.

Me? I think it was three times three
Nazgul.

 

[Eddie Dane]

I'm betting the answer is: stupid criminals.

 

[Klimax]

I'm betting the answer is: stupid criminals.

Criminaly stupid do criminal things?

 

[Infoexcavator]

There was a case in Finland a few months ago during which a heiress of the owner of an elevator company called KONE was kidnapped by a lawyer who wanted to make a good buck with the ransom. Before the media got any idea of the ongoing kidpnapping there were some strange occurences, a passer-by found tons of cash in a parking lot and the airspace around a large city was closed suddenly with the cops denying that anything was going on. Of course, after the hostage was freed they police announced that had lied before.

Now, in this case there have been some very interesting occurences, for example after the Arctic Sea had been reported abducted, a group of VFD firefighters when into the harbour with geiger counters (the regular firefighters called this amateurish and stupid basically) and the apparently the authorities always knew where the boat was and only told the press that it was missing. Also it was said incorrectly said that the company was not Finnish, actually it was owned by a Maltese company but the owners of that company all were Russians living in Finland. The crew of the ship still has not been released for some reason, they are still held in a russian detention center for questioning.

After thinking about this post I realize it was missing a valid point, but who cares?

 

[Nosi]

There a wooden Maltese Falcon hidden away somewhere?

 

[Eyeron]

Well, piracy is a dark conspiracy. Because at its core is a group of people conspiring to commit a crime.

 

[Toke]

The version I heard is that the lumber is actually cruise missiles being exported from russia to iran and some criminals got too ambitious for their own good.
They may or may not have had help from a crew member. Or the russians just treat freed hostages as criminals by default.

There are also the possibility that some russian criminals were inspired by somalians and have tried to pull the same trick. On a cargo of lumber.

 

[ref]

The Russian officials have released a couple of statements. Nothing new really, just stating they don't rule out the possibility of a secret cargo.

Any other information has been very limited.

"We do not know yet what it is carrying, we only know it is timber. But what else it is actually transporting. It has yet to be clarified," Nikolai Makarov, chief of Russia's general staff, told reporters during an official visit to Mongolia.

"We want to make sure that there is nothing but timber on board this ship. The motive for the seizure is simply not very clear," said Makarov.

...

"We do not rule out the possibility that they might have been carrying not only timber," Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Prosecutor-General's main investigations unit, said in an interview with the Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper published on Wednesday.

"This is why we need to examine the vessel; so that there are no dark spots in this story," he said. "This is why we asked the crew members to stay on in Moscow; we also have to clarify whether anyone of them may be involved in these events."

Four members of the crew were left aboard the ship in Cape Verde to sail it back to Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. Makarov said the vessel was likely to arrive in the first half of September.


http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/08/26/world/international-us-russia-ship-cargo.html?_r=1

 

[Caustic Logic]

Sounds interesting so far but i can't say much till i study it and too busy now. By the time I'm ready maybe we'll have more answers anyway. Not sure if it's CT material, but it is speculative, so why not? Maybe it has something to do with human trafficking and elitist occult sacrifice culture. Or sumpthin.

 

[ref]

Time Magazine joins the choir. Many similarities with 9/11 claims, including speculated Israeli involvement, a group of 19 men, missiles, a visit by a head of state, official version is not true, government involvement, no distress signals, slow military reaction, hijackers were set up, most heavily protected areas in the world, etc. Check these quotes out:

The highest-ranking official to put forward this version of events is the European Union's rapporteur on piracy and a former commander of the Estonian armed forces, Admiral Tarmo Kouts. In an interview with TIME, he says only a shipment of missiles could account for Russia's bizarre behavior throughout the monthlong saga. "There is the idea that there were missiles aboard, and one can't explain this situation in any other way," he says. "As a sailor with years of experience, I can tell you that the official versions are not realistic." Kouts says an Israeli interception of the cargo is the most likely explanation.

...

Why, with so many other ships carrying much more valuable cargo, would the hijackers target the Arctic Sea and its small load of timber? Why didn't the ship send out a distress signal? Why did Israeli President Shimon Peres pay a surprise visit to Russia a day after the ship was rescued? Why did Russia wait so long to send its navy to find the ship? And what did the brother of one of the alleged hijackers, Dmitri Bartenev, mean when he told Estonian TV on Aug. 24 that his brother and the other suspected pirates had been "set up ... They went to find work and ended up in a political conflict. Now they are hostage to some kind of political game"?

...

There are also questions surrounding the Arctic Sea's rescue. On orders from the Kremlin, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov sent a completely disproportionate force, including destroyers and submarines, to look for the vessel. It took five days for them to find it, the Defense Ministry said, even though the Foreign Ministry later announced that it was fully aware of the Arctic Sea's coordinates the entire time. To fly the alleged pirates and the crew back to Moscow — a group of only 19 men — Russia dispatched two enormous military-cargo planes.

...

"Even from the basic facts, without assumptions, it is clear that this was not just piracy," says Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the Russian maritime journal Sovfrakht, which has been tracking unusual incidents on the high seas for decades. "I've never seen anything like this. These are some of the most heavily policed waters in the world. You cannot just hide a ship there for weeks without government involvement."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1919342-1,00.html

It's still all speculation.

 

[Eddie Dane]

Time Magazine joins the choir. Many similarities with 9/11 claims, including speculated Israeli involvement, a group of 19 men, missiles, a visit by a head of state, official version is not true, government involvement, no distress signals, slow military reaction, hijackers were set up, most heavily protected areas in the world, etc. Check these quotes out:



It's still all speculation.

Having actually clicked on that link, I'll tell you this:
Whoever designed the Russian uniforms, ought to be shot.

Nice bit of sceptical journalism there. BTW.