Posted on 08/22/2009 3:37:02 PM PDT by drzz
Moscow, Aug 21 (DPA) A Russian newspaper claimed Friday that suspected pirates who boarded the freighter Arctic Sea were actually agents of the Israeli secret service trying to stop it from smuggling arms into Iran.
According to Russian media, the Arctic Sea may have been carrying illegal X-55 cruise missiles destined for Iran hidden among its cargo of lumber.
Men acting on behalf of the Israeli Mossad secret service commandeered the ship to divert the weapons away from Israel's regional enemy, the daily Novaya Gazeta said.
Citing Moscow publicist Yulia Latynina, the daily pointed to the surprise visit of Israeli President Shimon Peres Aug 18, a day after the Arctic Sea, which had been missing for three weeks, had been tracked down and liberated by Russian forces off West Africa.
During his visit, Peres, who according to Latynina had no other business in Russia, requested Moscow refrain from supplying weapons or missile defence systems to Iran.
Russian authorities denied that the Arctic Sea had been smuggling weapons.
Russian ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Dmitri Rogozin, said earlier Friday that such allegations were a 'fantasy' and 'ridiculous'.
The deployment at great expense of Russian Black Sea fleet to liberate the hijacked ship was undertaken for the sake of the 15 Russian seamen on board and not supposed weapons, Rogozin said.
Russian authorities in Moscow late Friday formally charged the eight alleged hijackers with kidnapping and piracy, the Interfax news agency reported.
The suspects include a Lithuanian, a Russian, three stateless people, and a Spaniard, the report said, adding that the citizenship of the two remaining suspects had yet to be clarified.
According to official reports, the Arctic Sea was liberated from pirates Monday off the coast of West Africa. According to the Russian sources, pirates seized the freighter July 24 off the coast of Sweden.
Victor Matveev, director of Solchart Management, the shipping company that owns the Arctic Sea freighter stated Friday that his company 'still has not received any official information' about the ship or its crew.
The “Russian media” is Novaya Gazeta, one of the rare independant paper in Russia, where the late Anna Politkovskaia worked.
The info is thus credible.
More links and info here :
http://www.drzz.info/article-35167622.html
Use translations tools provided on the page to find your way.
a bit strange explanation. If it really were Mossad, they surely would know that various navies were looking for the ship so the Israeli approach would have been eliminating the missiles and leaving the ship.
What is the point of staying in the ship when knowing Russian navy is looking it..
For a Russian newspaper, these guys are not bad. The information is well written and well thought out.
The visit of the Israeli president and the fact tha the Black Sea fleet went all the way to Africa does seem to signify this was a Black Ops.
All we have to guess is whodunit.
The Israelis?
The Americans?
The Indians? (no suspicion raised.. great friends of Israel)
All Russian press credibility died with her. Why do you think they killed her?
The Israelis were not captured.
The “hijackers”, claimed to be “Estonians” by the Russians, is pure disinformation. According to the Russians, the ship contained timber, but according to the former head of the Estonian defence forces and the Danish and Norwegian press, it contained cruise missiles.
The Russian story of the “Artic Sea” is how Moscow is embarassed and tries to create a fake story to divert embarrassing questions.
I concur – “Novaya Gazeta” (“New Paper”) and Latynina are among very few, who manages to be not an outright propaganda outlet of the Russian Government.
Whether this particular info is correct, the jury is still out... Looks quite plausible, but in Russia everyone - and I mean everyone - tends to exaggerate Israeli role in world affairs. It’s just some approve of those exaggerations.
FSB killed her.
But Novaya Gazeta is still running, with or without Politkovskaia.
No gov-oriented Russian propaganda would blame Israel, it would be too humiliting for Russians counter-intelligence.
That’s why the info is credible : because nobody in Moscow wants to read it.
I should have said “...approve of the content of those exaggerated claims”
Why am I not surprised....
Why is strange in a ship carrying cruise missiles to Iran being hijacked by Israeli intelligence ?
It’s logical.
I never trusted the Soviets and I will never, ever trust the Russians, period. They were in bed with Saddam until the very end, they did everything they could to hurt us in Iraq. Screw the Russians.
my sources say SPECTRE was behind it.
ping
I did not say “strange”. Quite contrary, I said “plausible”, or in your words “logical”.
Plausibility (or being logical) does not necessarily means that something is a fact. That’s all.
Cannot agree more, and I’m well placed to say this because I just interviewed a former KGB agent who says the same :
http://www.drzz.info/article-34937798.html
The mossad would not have hijacked the ship, they would have sent in Shayetet 13 and they would have attached limpet mines to the hull.
Very interesting times we live in.
But if the objective was to support Peres’s negociations with Russia on stopping the sell of weapons to Iran, Mossad had to hit without making any victims.
It is “coercitive negociations”. Israel uses it very often. Even against the US.
Could have been Arlen Specter - or Jim Thompson
I know one for sure Russia and Iran have in common.
It is called the “Caspian Sea.” It’s got ships and ports and stuff.
This story is ridiculous.
Maybe they would have wanted a few to study
“Oy-oy, oy-oy, a pirate’s life for me!”
Yes the route seems quite out-of-the-way.
OTOH, if you’re just trying to place something among regular traffic.
I’m sure somebody would have noticed her docking in Iran though.
Oyveh, Matey. Them that dies will be the lucky ones.
They could have done what they did to build the Mirage III. Bribe someone.
What's the difference between a stateless person and a person whose citizenship isn't clarified?
Or is that just code for three Palestinian terrorists?
Blame the Joooooooooooz!
Damn, that was awesome. I love freeper wit.
:)
Thx.
In a hurry.
What was on the ship?
cruise missiles from Russia, so claim the article.
Once again, its the JJJJOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSsssssssssssssss
Indeed. With a small submarine you can do that completely invisibly to the ship's crew. This bizarre attack, however, started in Swedish waters, then the ship travelled through a highly visible route when everyone was looking for it already, and only then it changed course only to be found soon. This incoherent plan is much easier to attribute to a gang of drug addicts than to any intelligence service, especially because whatever they wanted to do they failed miserably.
As other people noted already, if Russia wanted to send some missiles to Iran it could have shipped them through the Caspian sea, safely away from curious eyes. Russia sent so much stuff to Iran for Bushehr, a few more or a few less containers would make no difference.
On top of that, if indeed someone wanted to ship something illegal using Arctic Sea those materials first must be delivered to the loading port, namely Jakobstad, Finland. How do you covertly send a few tons of missiles across a Finnish state border? How do you ensure that dock workers will not ask any questions and Finnish customs will not find anything wrong with the cargo? And why in the world you'd want to use a foreign-owned ship for all that? And why, if you were insane enough to still go through with this harebrained plan, would you attract a world-wide attention to your act by changing the course of the ship and in the end *not* delivering the cargo?
According to Mr. Occam and his razor, Arctic Sea was hijacked by a bunch of locals who saw themselves as better pirates than Somalis.
Da Jooz
I was gonna post that.
A Lithuanian, a Russian, three stateless people, and a Spaniard walk into a bar...
Should have sunk it... errrr, had an accidental grounding or possibly a collision of an indeterminate order.
Headed for the Mooselymbs?
A Russian newspaper claimed Friday that suspected pirates who boarded the freighter Arctic Sea were actually agents of the Israeli secret service trying to stop it from smuggling arms into Iran... may have been carrying illegal X-55 cruise missiles destined for Iran hidden among its cargo of lumber... the daily pointed to the surprise visit of Israeli President Shimon Peres Aug 18, a day after the Arctic Sea, which had been missing for three weeks, had been tracked down and liberated by Russian forces off West Africa... Russian authorities denied that the Arctic Sea had been smuggling weapons... The deployment at great expense of Russian Black Sea fleet to liberate the hijacked ship was undertaken for the sake of the 15 Russian seamen on board and not supposed weapons, Rogozin said... The suspects include a Lithuanian, a Russian, three stateless people, and a Spaniard, the report said, adding that the citizenship of the two remaining suspects had yet to be clarified.
Shermy, will you keep the hell quiet!? If the Czar says it was the Joos, it was the Joos. OK? I don’t want those damned Cossacks progromming my shtetl again.
Partridge in a pear tree?
:’)
...the two people whose citizenship has yet to be clarified duck.
EXCELLENT!!
It’s illegal weapon traffic.
The Russians still claim the ship had no weapons, while the Scandinavian press claims the contrary.
Do you know ANY ship carrying timber, if lost, being researched by the largest deployment of Russian navy in recent memories ?
No way.
Geiger counter?
Not Russia’s first attempt.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iran/x-55.htm
Can’t trust Russia or it’s former republics.
Ambassador Andrei Lysenko: One of our submarines, an Alfa, was last reported in the area of the Grand Banks. We have not heard from her for some time.
Dr. Jeffrey Pelt: Andrei, you've lost another submarine?
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