Posted on 08/31/2009 2:36:39 PM PDT by Shermy
The Russian security service released the crew of the Arctic Sea in Moscow on Sunday. The 11 members of the crew of the hijacked ship were flown from Cape Verde to Russia nearly two weeks ago.
The Russian news agency Interfax reports that the men returned to their home town of Archangelsk, where they were met by their families. On Sunday, Russian authorities gave conflicting accounts of whether or not all of the crew would be released. The online portal life.ru reported that only nine members of the crew had been released. Rabbe von Hertzen of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said that no information had come to Finland during the weekend about the release of the crew.
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre) described the hijacking on Sunday as a confused situation. He was speaking on a monthly radio interview programme of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE). The motives behind the hijacking remained confused. Vanhanen says that he will discuss the matter with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin when the two meet on Tuesday.
The investigation into the hijacking is made more complicated by the fact that the ship flies under the Maltese flag, the shipping line is Finnish, but is under Russian ownership, the entire crew are Russian, and the hijackers are apparently from the Baltic countries. The crew and the hijackers are nevertheless being interrogated in Russia, whose navy captured the hijackers near Cape Verde on August 17th. The Arctic Sea was hijacked in Swedish waters in late July. Many rumours still circulate around the motives for the hijacking, the reasons for the massive Russian response, and the possible additional cargo - in addition to Finnish timber - that might have been on board the vessel.
Since Swedish waters are not exactly a center of pirate activity I suspect there is an inside angle to this. I also suspect something must have been on board more valuable and less bulky than timber.
This smells like a black operation.
Yep, the “rest of the story” should be quite interesting.
Just as a “what if” scenario, consider the sequelae of a several hundred megaton bomb explosion off the Canary Islands.
Along with a rather impressive tsunami type wave from the bomb, one of the Canary islands may ‘calve’ a chunk of submerged land sufficient to cause a wave of more than Biblical proportions to hit the US Eastern seaboard.
Other possibilities include fault line tension releases, and the associated negative impacts of population centers near said fault lines.
Not Kewl!
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