MOSCOW — Russia said Tuesday that it has detained eight suspected hijackers aboard the cargo ship that went missing near the English Channel this month, but it offered few details to explain the maritime mystery that has captivated Europe for weeks.
A day after the Russian navy intercepted the Maltese-flagged freighter Arctic Sea about 300 miles off Cape Verde, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said hijackers had seized control of the ship in Swedish waters on July 24 and forced its Russian crew at gunpoint to sail toward Africa.
“This was an act of piracy,” he told reporters.
The statement was the first official confirmation that the ship had been hijacked. But Russian authorities said nothing about why anyone would seize an aging vessel carrying timber and declined to address glaring inconsistencies in accounts of the incident.
No ship has been hijacked in the Baltic Sea in several centuries, according to Swedish officials, and some security and maritime analysts said the sophistication of the operation pointed to state involvement and secret cargo, possibly nuclear material.
Serdyukov identified the suspected hijackers only by nationality — two Russians, two Estonians and four Latvians — and said they were being questioned aboard the naval frigate that intercepted the Arctic Sea. Naval forces freed the crew and apprehended the suspects without firing a shot, he said.
Mikhail Voitenko, a maritime security consultant and journalist who has been helping relatives of the crew members, said that the official version was full of holes and that the crime was beyond the means of ordinary pirates.
Only “commandos” could pull off a hijacking in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, within cellphone range, he argued, adding, “The operation cost more than the cargo and ship combined.”
