The family of Morning Glory tanker captain Mirza Baig have claimed that he was forced to load oil from Libya’s blocked eastern ports by armed rebels who boarded the ship off of the Libyan coast, according to news agency, Reuters.
U.S. Navy Seals took control of the Morning Glory oil tanker in international waters off Cyprus on Sunday night, along with a cargo of oil that U.S. officials said had been stolen from the Libyan people, whose fragile government Washington supports.
Libya says gunmen demanding regional autonomy and a share of oil wealth managed to load crude onto the ship, which then escaped its navy. The embarrassment to the government in Tripoli prompted parliament to sack the prime minister.
Industry sources say much about the tanker has been a mystery since it showed up in eastern Libya nearly two weeks ago; the identity of its owner and operator were unknown, as was its ultimate destination and the buyer of its cargo.
According to Captain Baig’s $9,000-a-month contract, sent to Reuters by his family in Karachi, the operator was Dubai-based Saud Shipping, part of the ZAD Group of companies, which trades and moves oil around the Gulf.
The contract, signed in November, is on paper with a Saud Shipping letterhead and is stamped and counter-signed by the firm.
Baig’s family say the captain received direct orders from Saud Al Anazi, the head of ZAD Group, to stop near a rebel-held eastern Libyan port. Here, according to Baig’s family and Libyan officials, armed men boarded and loaded the ship with oil.
Public ship tracking data indicates that the tanker’s position was not broadcast between January 2013 and last month, when it reappeared on February 28 and entered the Suez Canal en route to eastern Libya.
It was Captain Baig, having boarded the vessel in Eritrea in November, who took it through the Suez Canal, his brother-in-law Ayaz Malik said by phone from Karachi.
After passing through the Suez Canal, Baig was ordered by ZAD’s Anazi to stop outside the Libyan port of Es Sider, Malik said. Armed rebels then sailed out from the port and boarded the ship, forcing the crew to dock and load it with oil.
“My husband and the crew have been held hostage by the rebels,” Baig’s wife, Qurat Noman Baig, told Reuters from Karachi.
“He did not want to dock at the Libyan port, but the rebels came on board and forced the crew at gun point to load the oil.”
Reuters has not been able to independently confirm this account.
Despite warnings from Tripoli that the ship would be bombed if it left Es Sider, it sailed out of the port on March 11 under fire from the lightly armed Libyan navy.
Baig subsequently received directions from Anazi to head towards Greece, his brother-in-law Malik said, and shortly afterwards the U.S. seized the vessel.
A Cypriot police source said two Israelis and a Senegalese who flew into Cyprus by Learjet and took a charter vessel toward the tanker were detained for questioning on Saturday on suspicion of attempting to buy the cargo, which Libya considers stolen.
The source said the men, two of whom had diplomatic passports – one from Senegal and one from a central African country – were freed after a court declined to issue an arrest warrant and the men then left for Tel Aviv.
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