The cargo vessel Arctic Sea, is said to have been hijacked off the coast of Öland, Sweden, in 2009, was carrying materials for making weapons of mass destruction.
Finnish security experts Timo Hellenberg and Pekka Visuri state this in their book In the eye of the storm (Myrskyn silmässä), which will be released this week. Speaking to the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, the authors say the chemical, biological or radioactive cargo was stolen from Russia and brought on board in Swedish waters. The destination was an undisclosed customer in the Middle East.
According to the Finnish experts, the European Union and NATO agreed with Moscow not to intervene, so that the Russian navy could enter the Arctic Sea itself near Cape Verde on 17 August 2009. Russia has always denied that weapons were on board. Officially, the ship was carrying wood. | © 2011 Marcel Burger for ANP News Agency (original in Dutch, 17 October 2011, previously unpublished)