Moscow, Russia – The mystery surrounding the hijacking of a Russian freighter in July has taken a new twist with reports claiming the pirates were acting in league with the Israeli Mossad secret service in order to halt a shipment of modern weapon systems hidden on board and destined for Iran.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
While Israeli and Russian officials dismissed the reports, accounts published in the Russian media sounded more like a spy thriller than a commercial hijacking.
“There is something fishy about this whole story, no doubt about it,” Israel’s former deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh told The Media Line. “But I can’t comment further on this.”
The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that the vessel Arctic Sea had been carrying x-55 cruise missiles and S300 anti-aircraft rockets hidden in secret compartments among its cargo of timber and sawdust.
The eight alleged hijackers originally claimed to be environmentalists when they boarded the ship in the Baltic Sea in Swedish waters on July 24.
The Russian navy eventually tracked it down three weeks later and recaptured it near the West African archipelago of Cape Verde on August 17, thousands of miles from its original destination of Algeria.
The eight alleged hijackers were charged late Friday with kidnapping and piracy, the Interfax news agency reported. Russian authorities have declined from revealing further information about the motives of the hijackers.
But Dmitri Rogozin, Russian ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said that allegations that the Arctic Sea had been smuggling weapons was “fantasy” and “ridiculous.”
The Russian newspaper Pravda’s website reported that the ship had been smuggling cruise missiles to Iran on a well-worn path via Algeria, but a “power that has relations with Ukraine” had prevented this.
The Novaya Gazeta reported that the hijackers had been operating on behalf of the Mossad. It also reported that the motive for the visit to Moscow by President Shimon Peres the day after the Russians recaptured the vessel had been an urgent request to his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev to refrain from supplying Iran with weapons.
Israeli officials dismissed the reports as “classical conspiracy theories,” but defense experts noted that Israel has a record of hijacking foreign vessels bearing arms to its enemies.
“This appears as the classical conspiracy theory. I didn’t see any evidence for it and so we aren’t going to comment,” said Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.
A spokeswoman for President Peres also dismissed the report, saying that the visit had been planned long in advance.
Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Shlomo Brom, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, did not rule out Israel covert action against Iranian efforts to acquire nuclear arms, but seriously suspected Israel would take action against Russian ships.
“It seems that it’s full of mystery since everything surrounding Russia is mysterious. And if it’s mysterious they dump it on Israel,” Brom told The Media Line.
Brom, a retired senior intelligence officer, added he did not believe it could enhance the Mossad’s image since it appeared to be a failed hijacking.
Israeli security agents routinely stage surprise at-sea boardings of ships headed to Israeli ports to search for terrorists, contraband and stowaways.
Do you really think the Mossad is so stupid?! They would have cleared the area not more than mere moments after the operation was executed! They Never leave a trace especially not eight “singing canaries”
“Brom, a retired senior intelligence officer, added he did not believe it could enhance the Mossad’s image since it appeared to be a failed hijacking.”
Its been missing 3 weeks, and mossad could not get done what they wanted???
Either it was successfull, either it was not mossad
so what else is new?
if you can’t get any answers just blame it on the jews-Israel!! anyways if true — Kol haKavod to the mossad!! for protecting israel and doing thier job…as for the russians let them find some decent work-trades other than supplying low- lives thugs with weapons…if not let them face the concequenses!!
What a great thing. I hope they dumped them in the Ocean and they are sitting on the ocean bottom mile down. Now they can reverse engineer the software and guidance electronics and make all the Ruski weapons obsolete for another decade. All that R&D down the drain. The Ruskis must be very upset. Fortunately, it is Elul. Chodesh Tov Yidden !!!
Maybe it took three weeks to resolve this because the Mossad (or whoever) needed time to off-load the rockets destined for Iran and take them somewhere else. Then once that was done, they clued the Russians in to where they could find the ship. Let the Iranians have their cargo of timber and sawdust. Maybe they can start a bonfire or something. Hopefully, Achmadinejad and the ayatollahs paid plenty of cash, all up front, for the cargo of cruise missiles and other rockets — and those items are all now either sitting at the bottom of the sea, useless and ruined, or the cargo has been taken to an unknown loacation where they can never get it, and Iran is out whatever they paid for it. Tough luck, guys.
Why would Russia use that route to ship arms to Iran? They could ship them through the Caspian Sea!
Strange story. I sincerely doubt the hijackers were caught. THey are blaming the crew men as hijackers because they got away – if it was the Mossad. Why would they stick around for 3 weeks. Get the cargo and Gegangen. Russia is blowing smoke to hide their complicity.