Officials question Irish cargo ship

MESSOLONGI, Greece -- A ship captain whose huge cargo of explosives raised fears of a terrorist plot claimed Wednesday he had expected to sail to Sudan, but the vessel's Irish owners ordered him to an obscure Greek port.\nCapt. Anatoliy Baltak of Ukraine and his six-member crew were jailed on suspicion of entering Greek territorial waters without informing officials of the 750 tons of ammonium nitrate-based explosives and detonators on board. Greek commandos seized the ship, the Baltic Sky, on Sunday after being alerted by a NATO task force monitoring shipping lanes in the eastern Mediterranean.\n"I didn't think I was doing something illegal," Baltak said after being questioned by a magistrate for nearly 90 minutes. "It didn't even cross my mind that terrorism was an issue."\nInvestigators were hoping Baltak would shed light on some of the main mysteries: Was the cargo legal and why did the ship linger for nearly six weeks at sea instead of directly delivering the shipment to its alleged buyers in Sudan?\nBaltak told reporters he took command of the ship June 3 in Istanbul, Turkey, and had documents for the explosives, which were loaded May 12 in Tunisia.\nHe said he anchored the ship in Turkey's Dardanelles strait near the Aegean Sea to await orders on when to proceed to Sudan from the vessel's "real owners," whom he identified as Christian McNulty of Ireland.\nBut he said telex orders came June 20 to cancel the Sudan journey and head for the little-used Ionian Sea port of Astakos, about 145 miles northwest of Athens. The vessel is currently in the adjacent harbor of Platiyali.\nHe did not know the reason for the change and said he believed the owners had notified Greek authorities of the new course.\n"The ship owner is responsible for everything," Baltak said.\nShipping documents say the vessel is controlled by a company in the tiny Pacific Island nation of Marshall Islands.\nBut several maritime sources, including the authoritative Lloyd's List shipping register, have linked McNulty with a Sligo, Ireland-based company, Unithorn Ltd., which is listed as the ship's manager. McNulty is associated with a string of problem-plagued shipping firms over the years, reports said.\nAttempts by The Associated Press to reach McNulty or Unithorn were unsuccessful.\nThe start-and-stop progress of the Comoros-flagged Baltic Sky was the focus of international surveillance for weeks. A special NATO anti-terrorism task force had raised an international alert and notified Greece and other nations.\nBaltak, who entered the courthouse without handcuffs and was accompanied by a Ukrainian diplomat, carried a small black pouch with documents relating to the cargo.\nThe other crew members -- four Ukrainians and two Azerbaijanis -- were freed from handcuffs and appeared before Magistrate Olga Arslanoglu individually for questioning. She will decide whether to proceed with trials.\nGreek Merchant Marine Minister Giorgos Anomeritis said the ship's owner has not come forward.\n"The questions are many," he told reporters Wednesday. "I don't understand the interest of some people that after 41 days -- during which the ship could have sunk or exploded -- no one who was responsible for informing international authorities gave any information about this ship."\nAnomeritis described the ship as "black" -- referring to its murky ownership and its Comoros registration, which offers low taxes and lax regulations.\n"A ship with a black flag went to the Black Sea with a black company ... all these black things should be investigated," he said.\nBut Greece is under pressure to release the explosives to a Sudanese businessman who claims they are for commercial purposes.\n"It has nothing to do with terrorism," said Essam Bakry al-Khalifa, director of Khartoum-based Mutakamila Company for Chemicals and Development Ltd.\nThe company insisted Tuesday the explosives were for projects such as road construction, cement and oil production, and telecommunications.\nThe Sudanese Foreign Ministry also gave the Greek ambassador documents they say proves the existence of the company.\n"The Greek government, maybe, wanted to join in the now-declared war against terrorism and uses this question to show it was siding with the anti-terrorism efforts," Sudan's foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, told the al-Jazeera Arabic satellite channel.\nTunisia's interior minister, Hedi Mhenni, said Tuesday the explosives were part of a "perfectly legal" commercial transaction.