Three mystery ships are tracked over suspected 'weapons' cargo

Three giant cargo ships are being tracked by US and British intelligence on suspicion that they might be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Each with a deadweight of 35,000 to 40,000 tonnes, the ships have been sailing around the world's oceans for the past three months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime law, say authoritative shipping industry sources.

The vessels left port in late November, just a few days after UN weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix began their search for the alleged Iraqi arsenal on their return to the country.

Uncovering such a deadly cargo on board would give George Bush and Tony Blair the much sought-after "smoking gun" needed to justify an attack on Saddam Hussein's regime, in the face of massive public opposition to war.

The ships were chartered by a shipping agent based in Egypt and are flying under the flags of three different countries. The continued radio silence since they left port, in addition to the captains' failure to provide information on their cargoes or their destinations, is a clear breach of international maritime laws.

The vessels are thought to have spent much of their time in the deep waters of the Indian Ocean, berthing at sea when they need to collect supplies of fuel and food. They have berthed in a handful of Arab countries, including Yemen.

American and British military forces are believed to be reluctant to stop and search the vessels for fear that any intervention might result in them being scuttled. If they were carrying chemical and biological weapons, or fissile nuclear material, and they were to be sunk at sea, the environmental damage could be catastrophic.

Washington and London might also want to orchestrate any raids so that they can present the ships as "evidence" that President Saddam is engaged in "material breach" of UN resolutions. This could provide the trigger for military strikes. While security sources in London last night were unable to provide information on any surveillance operation, the movement of the three ships is the source of growing concern among maritime and intelligence experts.

A shipping industry source told The Independent: "If Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction, then a very large part of its capability could be afloat on the high seas right now. These ships have maintained radio silence for long periods and, for a considerable time, they have been steaming around in ever-decreasing circles."

The ships are thought to have set sail from a country other than Iraq to avoid running the gauntlet of Western naval vessels patrolling the Gulf. Defence experts believe that, if they are carrying weapons of mass destruction, these could have been smuggled out through Syria or Jordan.

Despite hundreds of searches by UN inspectors, no evidence has yet been found of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes. A succession of "dossiers" presented by Downing Street has been criticised for providing inaccurate information, with the most recent one subject to ridicule because a student's 11-year-old doctoral thesis was being passed off as current intelligence. There was a further setback for Washington and London when the accuracy of satellite photographs shown to the United Nations by Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, purporting to show Iraqi officials moving incriminating evidence from a suspected site, was questioned by Hans Blix.

Mr Blix said: "The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of an imminent inspection."

Attempts to link the Iraqi regime to al-Qa'ida and other Islamist groups have also been met with scepticism. The UN says, though, that Iraq has failed to account for 1,000 tonnes of chemical agents from the war against Iran; to reveal the whereabouts of 6,500 missing chemical rockets; to produce evidence it has destroyed 8,500 litres of anthrax; and to account for 380 rocket engines smuggled into Iraq with chemicals used for missile propellants and control systems.

Intelligence reports, and some Iraqi defectors, have maintained that incriminating material and documents relating to weapons of mass destruction have been buried in remote parts of the country and have also been hidden in a variety of locations including homes of officials and scientists, as well as mosques. There have also been claims that chemical and biological products have been smuggled into Syria.

- "SHIPPING ROLE IN AL QAEDA TERRORISM — ‘15 FREIGHTERS IDENTIFIED," CILT News (from the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport) 1 January 2003 , http://www.citrans.org.uk/news-display.asp?ID=36.

Concerned about the vulnerabilities of American shipping since Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. officials have started paying more attention than ever to what cargo is loaded onto ships entering U.S. waters, and to who serves on crews, as well as to stowaways and individuals who appear to be surveying U.S. ports, reports The Washington Post.

In addition, U.S. intelligence agencies have set up large databases to track cargo, ships and seamen in a search for "anomalies" that could indicate terrorists on approaching ships, said Frances Fragos-Townsend, chief of U.S. Coast Guard intelligence.

The U.S. has identified approximately 15 cargo freighters around the world that they believe are controlled by al Qaeda or could be used by the terrorist network to ferry operatives, bombs, money or commodities over the high seas, government officials said.

Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda's leader and his aides have owned ships for years, some of which transported such commodities as cement and sesame seeds. But one vessel delivered the explosives that al Qaeda operatives used to bomb two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, U.S. officials said.

Since September 2001, the U.S. list of al Qaeda mystery ships has varied from a low of a dozen to a high of 50. Some are ships up to 400 feet long that do not need to refuel on extended journeys, and therefore are less likely to draw scrutiny. U.S. officials do not know precisely how each of these "ships of concern" is being used, except that some are generating profits for al Qaeda. Any of them could be used in an attack anywhere in the world, officials fear. The Washington Post quoted terrorism experts as saying that Al Qaeda has escalated its attempts to launch assaults at sea because it believes waterborne targets are easier, Starting with the suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen in 2000, by al Qaeda men in an inflatable dinghy — a strike that killed 17 sailors — U.S. officials have discerned a steady increase in nautical attacks, some of which were aborted by the planners or uncovered by authorities at the last moment. The latest attack came in October, when the hull of the French oil tanker Limburg was blasted by a speedboat off Yemen, causing a widespread oil spill.

"A shadowy underworld"

For decades, U.S. intelligence focused on foreign shipping only sporadically but after Sept. 11, U.S. officials realised the danger of terrorists attacking from the sea, and rushed to gain expertise about the world's commercial shipping industry.

U.S. Navy intelligence has struck data-sharing agreements with dozens of allied navies, and enlisted tipsters among port managers across the globe, as well as shipping agents, crew manning supervisors and seafarers unions.

"This industry is a shadowy underworld," said a senior U.S. government official knowledgeable about the effort. "After 9/11, we suddenly learned how little we understood about commercial shipping. You can't swing a dead cat in the shipping business without hitting somebody with phoney papers."

Dozens of Navy and allied ships are scouring the Arabian Sea in search of al Qaeda ships and fighters, in one of the largest naval seahunts since World War II. Members have searched hundreds of ships, and issued hundreds more "challenges" by radio asking for information.

In that part of the world, U.S. naval officers suspect they are as likely to find terrorists aboard a 300-foot freighter as they are aboard a dhow, the small sailing vessel common along the coasts of the Indian Ocean. U.S. officials believe traders sailing small craft have been bribed for months to help al Qaeda fighters escape from Pakistan to Yemen and other countries.

U.S. efforts to track al Qaeda's activities at sea received a boost last month with the capture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, an alleged mastermind of al Qaeda's nautical strategy who officials say is now co-operating with U.S. interrogators.

'Flags' of Convenience

Another new preoccupation for U.S. intelligence is the thousands of merchant ships world-wide that are registered in "flag of convenience" nations, some of which ask for almost no information from shipping firms that "flag" their vessels with them.

Navy officials say al Qaeda has used one shipping fleet — called Nova and incorporated in Delaware, U.S., and Romania but which is flagged in the Pacific island of Tonga — to transport operatives around the Mediterranean Sea. Last February, eight Pakistani men jumped ship off one of its freighters, the Twillinger, at the Italian port of Trieste after a trip from Cairo. U.S. officials say they determined that the men — who lied about being crewmen and carried false documents and large sums of money — had been sent by al Qaeda.

In August, after the captain of another of Nova's freighters, the recently renamed Sara, radioed to maritime authorities in Italy, U.S. officials say they found tens of thousands of dollars, false documents, maps of Italian cities and evidence tying some of those on board to al Qaeda members in Europe, and concluded that they, too, were possibly on a terrorist mission.

In October, European navies set up a dragnet for another Nova freighter, the oft-renamed Cristi. Greek merchant marine minister George Anomeritis told reporters then that besides the Cristi, NATO also has been looking for 24 other ships suspected of terrorist ties.

** The European Union has started legal action against member states who have bilateral anti-terrorist deals with the United States to beef up port security for U.S.-bound cargo, officials said.

The EU's executive Commission said all 15 member nations should join together in negotiating an overall deal with Washington, a move it claims would increase security and eliminate trade discrimination between EU ports.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, EU-U.S. co-operation has increased sharply, though disputes over the extradition of suspects and information sharing remain.

So far the United States has closed deals with the world's busiest port, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, as well as Belgium's Antwerp, Hamburg and Bremerhaven in Germany and the port at Le Havre in France.

Smaller EU ports are concerned being left out will leave them with a competitive disadvantage because cargo from the big ports would be given faster clearance in U.S. ports.

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