Greece: A ship "packed to breaking point" with explosives was bound for Sudan, where the shipment was addressed to a non-existent chemicals firm, a senior Greek minister said yesterday.
Police were yesterday still investigating whether the Comoros-flagged carrier had links to terrorist groups.
According to yesterday's edition of Lloyd's List, the Baltic Sky is controlled by two Irish nationals. Gardaí confirmed there was no suspicion of an IRA connection.
Suspicions were heightened by the vessel's odyssey around the eastern Mediterranean over the past six weeks and the fact that it was destined for Sudan, a country used in the past as a base for al-Qaeda.
"This is the biggest quantity of explosives ever seized in the world from a ship sailing illegally," the Greek Merchant Marine Ministry said.
The Merchant Marine Minister, Mr Giorgos Anomeritis, said: "We are sure that the ship was loaded in Tunisia and was heading for Khartoum."
He said although the vessel, the Baltic Sky, had properly documented the cargo - 680 tonnes of ammonia dynamite and 8,000 detonators and fuses - its Ukrainian captain, Mr Anatoly Baltak, had failed to report it when the carrier entered Greek waters.
Mr Baltak and his crew, five Ukrainians and two Azerbaijanis, were arrested and charged with illegal transportation of the dangerous materials.
Ship documents showed the vessel, registered in the Marshall Islands in the south Pacific, had been destined for a company called Integrated Chemicals and Development.
The firm's address was given as a post office box in Khartoum. But, Mr Anomeritis added, no such company existed.
Sudan was on a US list of nations sponsoring terrorism. The country was used as a base by Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network from 1991 to 1996.
A ministry official said the dynamite, often used in mining and construction, had been "packed to breaking point" on the ship.
A police source added: "The sheer volume of the explosives involved is mind-boggling. One metric tonne is enough to blow apart an entire apartment block; here we're talking about 680 tonnes floating around the Mediterranean."
The ship's captain had refused to explain the vessel's erratic voyage since it set out from Albania on April 27th.
Greek authorities, acting on a tip-off from Western intelligence agencies, had shadowed the Baltic Sky for five days before elite forces seized it on Sunday off Missolonghi, in the western Ionian Sea.
Police said they had not ruled out the possibility that the vessel was being used as part of a "controlled undercover operation" to entrap terrorist groups signed up to buy its cargo.
"Special troops, frogmen and our special commandos executed the operation, working on leads from domestic and international intelligence sources that said the ship was suspect," Mr George Papachristodoulou of the Greek Coast Guard told Reuters.
Under Greek law, the penalty is from five to 20 years, depending on the amount of explosives and circumstances.
The crew have denied the charges, the official told Reuters.
They were taken away in handcuffs and given 48 hours to prepare their defences. They are due to appear before an investigative magistrate on tomorrow morning.
Mr Anomeritis, said that the 37-year-old ship left Albania on April 27th, stopped off at Gabes in Tunisia on May 12th where the explosives were loaded, showed up in Istanbul on May 22nd and was sighted in waters off northern Turkey on June 2nd.
- (Guardian Service, Reuters)