No Illegal Weapons Onboard Vessels Flying ‘Salone’ Flag
Contrary to news making waves about a vessel flying the Sierra Leonean Flag arrested with arms and ammunition in Greece, the Executive Director of the Sierra Leone Maritime Administration, Alhaji Wurroh Jalloh who is presently out of the country on an official assignment, has put the record straight expressing that investigations conducted have proven that the vessel M/V Nour M has no illegal arms onboard as was reported and that cargo onboard is destined for Libya.
The SLMA Boss during an interview with this reporter explained that the Vessel Captain, Huseyin Yılmaz, of the Nour M cargo ship, which was detained by the Greek authorities for allegedly carrying a large batch of weapons and explosives, has said that there were no illegal arms on board and the cargo was intended for the Libyan Defense Ministry.
“There are no explosives or weapons on board. I and my crew are going crazy. I learned the claims that the ship was carrying 20,000 Kalashnikovs and explosives from the press. I have sailed for 40 years, and this is the first time that such a thing has happened to me,” Yilmaz, a Turkish national, told Turkey’s Dogan news agency.
He said that the claims were groundless.
“The ship had on board containers that we loaded in Ukraine to be transported to the Tripoli port and then delivered to the Libyan Defense Ministry,” Yilmaz said.
According to him, a small breakdown occurred when the Greek coastguards intercepted the ship. “While we were thinking that they had come to help us, they towed the ship to Rhodes… They have been searching it for three days, inspecting the documents,” the captain said, adding that the content of the shipment had been declared to the Turkish authorities as the vessel had crossed through Turkish waters.
Yılmaz said he gave the Greek police the phone numbers of the company that was delivering the containers, and a representative of the Libyan ministry.
“I told them to arrest me if there were any weapons. But the police did not have the courage to look into the containers because it was a transit shipment. I and my two Turkish crew members have been interrogated nine times,” the captain said.
Reports appeared on Friday that the Greek coast guard detained the Nour M cargo ship in the Aegean Sea, which was sailing under the flag of Sierra Leone from Ukraine and carrying 20,000 Kalashnikovs and explosives in 50 containers without proper documents.
The media also reported that the cargo ship left Mykolaiv on October 25, and stood in Istanbul from October 30 to November 3.
The captain said the ship was bound for the Turkish port of Iskenderun. At the same time, there are reports that some of the cargo might have been intended for delivery to the ports of Tartus (Syria) and Tripoli (Libya). According to the state-run Athens News Agency (ANA), the captain of the ship and seven crew members were arrested.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that there were no Ukrainians among the ship’s crew.
The SLMA Boss explained that his institution is doing its best to clean up the ship’s register stressing that SLMA is no way responsible for any ill action by ship owners and operators or characters if they go against the conditions under which you are registered.
‘’The ship is registered with our international registry as a general cargo ship registered in 2007. And made an extension in 2012 under different ownership, Jalloh told this Press in a phone interview.
He added that SLMA have contacted all relevant stakeholders to assist Sierra Leone with regards to unseaworthy ships which is part of the institutions’ core mandate so as to get rid of them from the registry noting that as head of the institution his main aim was to clean up the register so that Sierra Leone will one day be like Liberia.
By Abdul R. Bedor Kamara
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