SEIZURE OF CARGO SHIP REMAINS A MYSTERY

NY Times - The eight men who were said to have commandeered a cargo ship in the Baltic Sea in July were locked up weeks ago. They were hunted down by the Russian navy, captured without a fight and marched before television cameras to a Moscow jail. But rather than ending there, the swashbuckling tale has grown more mysterious. What exactly befell the Maltese-flagged ship, the Arctic Sea, is still largely unknown. Nearly eight weeks after it was supposedly liberated by the Russians, the ship is said to remain at sea under military control. Four members of the crew have not been able to leave. . . After seizing the ship, which lost contact off Portugal in late July, the hijackers sought to change its name by painting a new one, Jon Jin 2, on its hull, Russian officials said. The new name happened to be already registered to a North Korean ship. "Something certainly happened out there, but we are not allowed to talk about it," Yevgeny Falin, who was second in command on the Arctic Sea, said by telephone from Arkhangelsk, the northern Russian port city where the crew is based.