The crew and suspected hijackers of the Arctic Sea cargo ship arrived in Russia yesterday after a maritime saga peppered with piracy and the hint of espionage.
Russian warships found the merchant ship in the Atlantic Ocean off the Cape Verde islands on Monday and Moscow said eight people - nationals of Estonia,Latvia and Russia - had been arrested for hijacking the vessel.
Ilyushin-76 military planes carrying 11 of the 15-member Russian crew and the men suspected of hijacking the Maltese-registered ship arrived at the Chkalovsky military airfield outside Moscow, local news agencies reported.
The suspected men were then taken under guard to Moscow's high-security Lefortovo prison.
Russia says the men had hijacked the ship on July 24 off the coast of Sweden and then threatened to blow it up if their ransom demands were not met.
After heading through the English Channel in late July, radio contact was apparently lost and the 4,000-ton ship did not deliver its cargo to the Algerian port of Bejaia on Aug 4.
Power plant tragedy
The death toll in a Russian power plant accident rose to 17 yesterday after three more bodies were found, and harrowing escape stories emerged from the few survivors.
Over 1,000 rescue workers searched the massive Sayano-Shushenskaya hydro-electric plant in southern Siberia for the 57 people who remain missing and are feared dead. Yesterday they pumped out the remaining water from the damaged engine room to try to find more bodies.
A powerful blast on Monday blew out walls and caused the power plant's turbine room to flood. Three of the plant's 10 turbines were destroyed.
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