LONDON — First the ship reported it had been attacked in waters off Sweden. Then it sailed with no apparent problems through one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. And then it disappeared.
The Arctic Sea, a Maltese-flagged cargo ship, was supposed to make port in Algeria with its cargo of timber Aug. 4. More than a week later, there’s no sign of the ship or its Russian crew.
Piracy has exploded off the coast of lawless Somalia — but could this be an almost unheard-of case of sea banditry in European waters?
“If this is a criminal act, it appears to be following a new business model,” intelligence expert Graeme Gibbon-Brooks told Sky News.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the country’s defense minister Wednesday to take “all necessary measures” to find the missing cargo ship and, if necessary, to free its crew, the Kremlin said.
The mystery began July 24, when the 15 crew members of the Arctic Sea said they were tied up and beaten by a group of up to 10 men who boarded the ship off the Swedish island of Oland.
The crew then claimed that the men left the ship 12 hours later in a high-speed inflatable boat, Swedish police said.
On July 28, the Arctic Sea made contact with British maritime authorities as it passed through the English Channel. The ship made a routine, mandatory report — saying who they were, where they were from, where they were going and what their cargo was. It appeared routine, said Mark Clark of Britain’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency.
Russian media reports say the last contact was July 30 when the ship was in the Bay of Biscay.
