Reported by Al Jazeera
Captain Ajay Pant was in international waters when his allegedly ‘shadow’ tanker was captured by British soldiers in a first-of-its-kind case, which has prompted outrage among global seafarers, as his wife tries to free him.
Ritu Pant always made sure that her merchant navy officer husband told her two things before departing on an assignment.
“I always noted the details and the name of his ship and his emergency contact details in case of a crisis,” says Ritu, who is based in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.
More from the original report
That’s what she did on April 25, when her husband Ajay left Paradip Port in the state of Odisha on board the MT Smyrtos, a crude oil tanker. Her husband had been a sailor for 18 years, and spent six or seven months a year at sea. But growing threats to seamen – amid the wars in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine, and from pirates roaming the high seas – had increased her jitters in recent years.
Yet it was through a social media post that she learned in mid-June that the ship had been captured. Not by pirates, but by the British armed forces, because the MT Smyrtos is under Western sanctions for allegedly working as part of Russia’s shadow fleet, a network of vessels that help Moscow evade United States and European economic restrictions to continue to sell oil and gas, amid the war on Ukraine.
Now Ajay Pant faces charges of flouting United Kingdom sanctions against Russia by commandeering the ship. It’s the first known instance when a European nation has kept a ship captain under arrest on such grounds, and could set a worrying precedent, say lawyers and groups advocating for the rights of seafarers. “This is a unique case,” said Tony Patten, the UK representative at the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), an organisation that works for the rights of seafarers.
Other European countries have also taken over ships that they accuse of violating sanctions against Russia, but while they’ve kept the vessels, they have so far let the sailors go. In March this…