Indonesia deports seized Iranian crew, tanker after four months

Panamanian-flagged MT Frea, left, and Iranian-flagged MT Horse tankers are seen anchored together in Pontianak waters off Borneo island, Indonesia. (File/AP)

• Captains of the tanker and another Panama vessel were found guilty on Tuesday for entering Indonesian territory without a permit

JAKARTA: Indonesia has deported the captains of two oil tankers belonging to Iran and Panama and escorted their vessels out of its waters over the weekend after a court ruling earlier in the week found the two men guilty of violating the country’s navigational rules, Indonesian authorities said on Sunday.
Indonesia’s Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla) Spokesman Col. Wisnu Pramandita told Arab News that the tankers were freed on Friday after the immigration department issued a deportation order for the two captains following their convictions.
Pramandita said the department handed each man his passport onboard a Bakamla vessel, which then took them to their respective ships.
“Bakamla ship KN Pulau Dana-323 monitored the whole process and was escorting MT Horse and MT Freya as they began sailing out of Indonesia to make sure they left Indonesian waters,” he said.
“We escorted them for about three hours until they reached international waters on the Malacca Straits,” Pramandita added.
On Tuesday, a district court in Batam, in the province of Riau Islands, south of Singapore, where the tankers had been impounded for four months, sentenced Mehdi Monghasemjahromi, captain of the Iran-flagged MT Horse and Chen Yo Qun, captain of the Panama-flagged MT Freya, with a suspended one-year prison term subject to probation for two years. The sentence means that the two captains do not have to immediately serve the prison term unless they repeat the same offense during the probation.
The two were found guilty of unauthorized entry into Indonesian waters by sailing out of the designated sea lanes for the innocent passage of foreign vessels within the Indonesian archipelago.
The court did not find Monghasemjahromi guilty of weapon possession and ordered that the firearms and ammunition found inside the Iranian tanker, which had been held as evidence during the trial, be returned to the tanker’s chief security guard.
However, Pramandita said the court ordered MT Freya’s captain to pay a fine of 2 billion rupiahs ($139,798) for causing environmental damage by spilling oil in Indonesia’s waters when the two tankers were conducting an unauthorized ship-to-ship oil transfer in the waters off Pontianak, the capital of the West Kalimantan province.
On Jan. 24, the two tankers were caught in the act with their hoses connected when a Bakamla ship, KN Marore-322, detected on its radar an idle signal, which indicated that a vessel’s automatic identification system had been turned off.
The ship proceeded to the location and found the two tankers illegally transferring oil from MT Horse to MT Freya. The tankers had also concealed their identities by covering their hulls and not flying their respective national flags.
Bakamla then impounded the two supertankers before they were anchored off Bakamla base in Riau Islands’ Batu Ampar port, while the 25 Chinese nationals on MT Freya and 36 Iranian nationals on MT Horse were detained onboard their tankers.
In February, Bakamla’s Vice Adm. Aan Kurnia told reporters that the two tankers had trespassed 25 nautical miles into Indonesia’s territorial waters when the agency caught them.
Iranian news agency IRNA reported that the MT Horse, which belongs to the National Iranian Tanker Company, has resumed its mission after 125 days of impoundment and “successfully passed legal procedures with the support of Iranian officials and consular assistance by the Foreign Ministry.”
“The devoted staff of the tanker tolerated separation from their families during the long period to defend their national duty resolutely,” the agency reported.
On April 19, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif visited Indonesia and met with his Indonesian counterpart, Retno Marsudi, before paying a courtesy visit to President Joko Widodo.
A statement from Indonesia’s foreign ministry said that both foreign ministers discussed bilateral cooperation, including efforts to combat the pandemic and achieve post-pandemic economic recoveries, with no mention of the tanker.