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Turkish captain of seized ship faces jail term in Georgia
Georgia seized the fuel tanker on Monday as it stepped up efforts to isolate Abkhazia and another breakaway region, South Ossetia. It has banned economic and commercial activities there without its permission. The Turkish tanker, operating under a Panamanian flag with Turkish and Azeri crew, was detained off the Georgian coast carrying 2,000 tons of gasoline and 700 tons of diesel, worth $3-4 million, according to the tanker's Turkish operator.
The operator said the ship had been closer to Turkish territory than Georgian when it was seized. “The point at which the boat had been seized was 96 miles from the [Turkish] port of Sinop and 256 miles from the Georgian port of Poti. It was outside of Georgia's territorial waters and furthermore outside of the country's economic zone; it was in international waters,” Densa Tanker Operators said in a statement. “Georgian forces then detained the captain and the ship's officers at gunpoint, turned off its navigation devices and secretly took the boat to the port of Poti,” the statement said.
No date has been set for the captain to appear in court. The crew remains on the ship in Poti.
Densa General Manager Huseyin San said the ship had already made five trips to the Abkhaz port of Sukhumi since last August but was careful to avoid Georgian waters and travel through Russian waters.
Densa said it was in talks with Turkish and Georgian authorities to free the ship, its crew and cargo.
On Thursday, the Georgian coastguard said it had detained another vessel carrying scrap metal from Abkhazia. It was operating under a Cambodian flag with a Syrian crew. Coastguard head Besik Shengelia said it was the fourth such seizure this year. Later in the day, Abkhazia accused Georgia of trying to suffocate the Black Sea territory and threatened a “proportionate response” to the Georgian blockade.
Almost all investment in South Ossetia and Abkhazia comes from Russia, which recognized the regions on its southern border as independent states after crushing a Georgian assault on South Ossetia last August.
Both regions threw off Georgian rule in wars in the early 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But shunned by the West, they are dependent on Russian aid and investment.
A lush strip of sub-tropical territory on the Black Sea, Abkhazia was once the playground of the Soviet elite and hopes to position itself as a popular tourist destination once again.
But under Georgian law, foreigners face prosecution if they enter South Ossetia or Abkhazia without permission from Tbilisi. Some Abkhaz officials say the policy is simply driving them further toward Russia, which already controls Abkhazia's borders and patrols its coastline.
Abkhazia compared Georgian authorities to Somali pirates. “Under the law in force in Georgia, we don't even have the right to breathe without permission from Tbilisi,” Abkhazia's foreign minister, Sergei Shamba, told Russian Interfax. “We warned Georgia that we can make a proportionate response, take the same kind of actions that the Georgian side allows itself,” he said.
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