Artic Sea - Why no phone home?

One outstanding mystery is why, if the ship was hijacked on 24 July, none of the crew was able to get the word out before contact was lost a few days later. "The vessel had all the necessary modern means of communication and emergency alarms, and was located in waters where ordinary mobile telephones work," said Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the Russian maritime journal Sovfrakht. "To hijack the vessel so that no one makes a peep – can you imagine how that could be? I can't." Mr Voitenko is one of the few commentators who have provided a trickle of information about the ship. He and other Russian experts have aired suspicions that the 98-metre freighter was carrying an undeclared cargo and that high-level state interests were involved, but so far nobody has been able to provide details. here

Arctic Sea found hiding off Dakar

"The media had been given deliberately misleading information “which did not allow them to calculate the true actions of the Russian forces”. The Russian said that there had been intensive exchanges of information with Nato forces, which had enabled the Russian navy to seize the ship and “save the crew”.

Russian Frigate Ladny holds crew of Arctic Sea

The Arctic Sea crew were not under armed control, some of the crew are of Russian nationality. Aboard the Frigate Ladny, the questioning aims to clarify all circumstances of how the ship disappeared and why did it not send any signals.

Arctic Sea crew being interrogated

The Arctic Sea was found early on August 17 300 miles (480 km) off Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean.
"The crew have been transferred to another ship. They are being interrogated now in order to find out what happened," Mr Serdyukov said, according to the agency.