News has started coming in of a sanctioned Russian cargo ship being intercepted for ‘violating Portuguese territorial waters’ at the end of August, ending up just three nautical miles off Póvoa de Varzim.
The ‘Adler’ is described as a specialised cargo ship for the transport of vehicles, but is understood to have delivered missiles to China (in 2018), arms to Libya, and munitions to the war in Ukraine.
Earlier this year, it is suspected of having transported combat vehicles to Russian mercenaries in the Africa Corp.
The vessel is blacklisted by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), an agency of the United States Department of the Treasury responsible for enforcing financial sanctions and combating money laundering, writes Expresso.
Other ships owned by the company to which the Adler belongs, M Leasing LLC, are also suspected of having transported ammunition and weapons from China and North Korea to the war in Ukraine, says the paper.
But in this particular case, there appears to have been little in the way of ‘a threat’ to the local or even national population. The Adler was adrift, with problem that it did not explain.
Contacted by the maritime operations centre, the ship also did not reveal its final destination, the number of crew or the nature of its cargo.
The omission appears to have been deliberate, says a report by SIC Notícias, suggesting that this simply “adds to the mystery surrounding the ship’s activities”.
Once contact with the vessel was made, the decision was taken by Portuguese authorities to organise a ‘tow’ to Algeria – bearing in mind no sanctioned Russian vessel is allowed to dock in Europe.
Thus between August 27 when it was first spied inside Portuguese waters, and September 2, the 30-year-old ship was towed parallel with the Portuguese coast, before reaching the straits of Gibraltar and passing through them en-route to Algeria.
The Spanish tugboat involved in this operation has been identified as the Roma. The Adler is not the original name of the Russian cargo ship. Expresso explains that it has changed its name and flag several times over the 30 years, which is a common practice “when seeking to act in secret and cover up illegal activities”.
The paper’s story on this strange episode adds that the spokesman for the Navy, Commander Ricardo Sá Granja did not reveal whether the Russian vessel was boarded or checked by any Portuguese war ship. “The Navy also did not respond over whether it knew the Adler’s cargo, nor to which entities it reported the incident”.
The Adler is, reportedly, still docked in the Algerian port of Orão.
Source: Expresso/ SIC Notícias
