Yesterday, there weren’t any hijackers, but today there are suddenly eight. Go figure.

Russia Detains Eight in Hijacking of Ship Arctic Sea (Update1)

Russia’s navy detained eight suspected hijackers of the Maltese-flagged freighter Arctic Sea after a 25-day odyssey that ended in the Cape Verde islands off west Africa, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said.

The eight hijackers are citizens of Estonia, Latvia and Russia, Serdyukov told President Dmitry Medvedev today in comments published on the Kremlin’s Web site. The armed group boarded the Arctic Sea on July 24, then forced the crew to change course toward Africa and to shut down the ship’s navigational equipment, he said. The freighter had been en route from Finland to Algeria.

Russia learned of the Arctic Sea’s location “several days ago” and kept that information secret to give its warship, the Ladny, time to navigate the Cape Verde archipelago and catch the hijackers by surprise, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the government’s newspaper of record, reported. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization provided logistical support, the newspaper said.

The disappearance of the Arctic Sea, owned by Helsinki- based Oy Solchart Management AB, sparked international speculation about its fate, including a reported sighting at the Spanish port of San Sebastian, a possible second attack off Portugal and a Finnish police report of a ransom demand.

…

Defense Ministry spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said by phone in Moscow today that he couldn’t confirm or deny the Rossiyskaya Gazeta report that NATO cooperated in the investigation. He said the crew was aboard the warship Ladny near Cape Verde and was being questioned. Carmen Romero, a spokeswoman for NATO in Brussels, couldn’t be reached for comment immediately.

The freighter was en route from Finland to Algeria with a cargo of timber valued at 1.3 million euros ($1.8 million). The seller was Rets Timber, a joint venture between Europe’s largest papermaker, Stora Enso Oyj, and UPM-Kymmene Oyj, Kari Naumanen, chief executive officer for Helsinki-based Rets, said by phone today. Most of the lumber came from other companies, he said.

Rets knows “nothing more than what’s public,” and wasn’t contacted by the hijackers, Naumanen said.

Finnish police didn’t contact Rets before going public with their investigation and haven’t shared internal information, he said. “They have not put one single question to us.”

The vessel will continue to Algeria to deliver its shipment, which is the property of three importers in Algeria, Naumanen said, declining to identify them. Rets has used Solchart for shipments to Algeria and Egypt for about 13 years, he said.

So, eight criminals hijack an 18 year old freighter laden with a cargo of $1.8 million worth of wood and demand $1.5 million in ransom? It hardly seems worth the effort, certainly no self-respecting Somali pirate would sink that low.

/sorry, I’m still not buying it, there’s got to be more to this story that’s not being made public yet