Is the hijacking incident in the Sea of Oman over? Was there ever a hijacking incident in the first place? U.K. Maritime Trade Operations, a unit of the U.K. Ministry of Defense, announced late yesterday that the alleged boarders had left the bitumen carrier Asphalt Princess (which was never actually named in the British reports) and that the “incident” was complete. No other details were provided.
UKMTO and other reports out of London had claimed earlier in the day that nine armed men had boarded the vessel and taken control. The British assumption, according to various news reports, was that the hijackers were Iranian and had ordered the vessel north to Iran. Mikhail Voytenko, the editor of another ship tracking website called FleetMon, doubts there was even a hijacking. Updating the story at 0440 UTC this morning, he writes: “Asphalt tanker Asphalt Princess, operated by U.A.E.-based company, is an old rusty bucket of a very dignified age of some 45 years. There’s no AIS [Automatic Identification System] records history, tanker emerged on the radars shortly before the ‘hijack’ on Jul 29, drifting off Fujairah, U.A.E.-Sohar, Oman, and went off radars again, to reappear on Aug 3, when she was ‘hijacked.’
“Tanker’s value is something close to the value of scrap metal, she’s almost undoubtedly, in ballast [meaning that it likely has little or no cargo aboard], so what very stupid criminal will choose her as most suitable target for hijacking?
