Ritu Pant always made sure that her merchant navy officer husband told her two things before departing on an assignment. 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. 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 year, a captain of a suspected Russian shadow fleet was prosecuted in absentia by a French court. In another case from Finland, a court dismissed charges against the captain of a Russian oil tanker accused of damaging undersea cables in the Baltic Sea on account of lack of jurisdiction. In other cases, European nations have set commercial sailors free with fines.
By contrast, Ajay faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. The case has also underlined a growing tension between maritime traffic through international waters – the Smyrtos was not in British territorial waters when it was captured – and the enforcement by countries of sanctions that are not approved by the United Nations. The open seas have always been dangerous, but the risks have mounted as wars and piracy have turned ships and their crew into active targets for militaries and mercenaries alike.
At least 24 seafarers have been killed in the Strait of Hormuz since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran in February. More than 120 commercial ships and tankers have been attacked in this period in the waterway, which used to transport a fifth of the world’s energy supplies before the start of the war. The death toll in the Black Sea is even grimmer: At least 40 sailors have been killed in more than 570 attacks on vessels there.
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