Word: cargo
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...Since then, the Russian navy has found the ship, and the alleged hijackers who boarded it on July 24 have been charged with kidnapping and piracy. The ship's captain, his crew and whatever cargo the ship was carrying have also been detained. An initial search of the hull turned up nothing suspicious, and now Russia's official explanation of what happened will probably become the final one - this was a hijacking thwarted by its navy without a shot being fired. But there are baffling details left unexplained, leading some experts to claim that the truth is much more sinister...
...Kouts says an Israeli interception of the cargo is the most likely explanation. But this theory, which some Russian analysts put forward in the days after the Arctic Sea was rescued and which Kouts agreed with in his interview with TIME, has been vehemently denied by Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, who says Kouts should stop "running his mouth." (Read "Girding for the Pirates' Revenge...
...details of the hijacking emerged, the tale got murkier, and Moscow's explanation does little to clear things up. Why, with so many other ships carrying much more valuable cargo, would the hijackers target the Arctic Sea and its small load of timber? Why didn't the ship send out a distress signal? Why did Israeli President Shimon Peres pay a surprise visit to Russia a day after the ship was rescued? Why did Russia wait so long to send its navy to find the ship? And what did the brother of one of the alleged hijackers, Dmitri Bartenev, mean...
...find it, the Defense Ministry said, even though the Foreign Ministry later announced that it was fully aware of the Arctic Sea's coordinates the entire time. To fly the alleged pirates and the crew back to Moscow - a group of only 19 men - Russia dispatched two enormous military-cargo planes. And then on their arrival, the ship's crew was detained along with the alleged hijackers for days of questioning, with no access to their families or the media...
...According to Voitenko and other experts, a secret cargo could have been hidden on the ship during the two weeks it spent in Kaliningrad for repairs, just before it picked up its Finnish haul of timber. Not contiguous with the rest of Russia, Kaliningrad is the country's westernmost enclave on the coast of the Baltic Sea, and is known as a hub for Russian smugglers. "Personally, I don't care about any missiles," Voitenko tells TIME. "I care about what they're doing with those sailors...