To: Liz Carlyle
From: Peggy Kinsolving
Re: The Aristides
Ref: TH/CTE-cna342
The Aristides is a container ship leased by UCSO from Xenides Shipping. UCSO has an Athens office because Greece remains an important hub of commercial shipping, and it allows easy shipment of aid to either the continent of Africa, or via the Indian Ocean, Asia and the Far East. Though most ships, including the Aristides, fly flags of convenience for tax purposes (Liberia and Panama remain most popular), the Greek-owned maritime fleet is the largest in the word, accounting for 16% of global cargo tonnage.
The Aristides is a relatively small container ship, with a capacity of 2,500 TFO – TFO stands for Twenty Foot Equivalent Unit, which is the length of each container. A big cargo ship is anything over 7,000 TFOs and the largest can top 15,000. The advantage of the Aristides’ s comparative smallness is that it does not have to use only those ports with crane facilities – it has its own small crane on board. This allows the vessel flexibility in its choice of harbours, though it most commonly unloads in Mombasa, Kenya, which remains the major distribution point for its African shipments – and Africa in turn is the largest recipient of UCSO aid.
Despite their size, container ships have small crews – as few as 15 or 20 on board. The Aristides sails with a larger contingent of about 30, because of the team required to maintain and operate the crane. All passengers and crew live in the accommodation block at the stern of the ship, near the engine room.
On the voyage when the most recent hijack attempt was made, the Aristides was sailing with 31 crew members, of whom 25 were seamen. These sailors were recruited by Xenides Shipping, and were a mixture of nationalities. The captain (Erich Steffer, to whom I spoke on the phone) was Belgian, as was his second in command; two other officers were Danes (brothers), one was Italian, and one Greek. The crewmen were from Asia and the Far East: 10 South Koreans, 2 Indonesians, 5 Filipinos, 2 Vietnamese, and 6 Pakistanis.
It is the last category who are interesting. Crew members have to show proof of identity in the form of passports, and they require temporary working papers from the Greek government. They are usually hired by Xenides through a local Athens employment agency which has strong ties to sources of labour – the Philippines, Indonesia, etc. In the past year, however, Xenides has used a new employment agency which is Pakistani-owned, so unsurprisingly more crewmen have started to come from Pakistan.
On this occasion, after the unsuccessful hijacking and a delay of half a day, the Aristides continued on down the east coast of Africa to Kenya, where it offloaded its cargo in Mombasa. Its crew were then granted shore leave of two days, but 6 of them did not return when the ship was due to sail. Occasionally crewmen jump ship during a voyage, usually when the ship stops at a port offering temptations – Marseilles and Beirut most famously. Mombasa is not known for its onshore attractions. But despite the Captain’s delaying departure by 12 hours, none of the missing men reboarded, and Captain Steffer finally sailed without them.
The missing 6 were the Pakistani contingent. Steffer told me he had already formed suspicions about them because they spoke to each other in English rather than in Urdu. Greek liaison has sent copies of their employment papers and photocopies of their passports. There are many obvious irregularities: one passport gave the date of birth for a very young-looking man as 1960.
It is unlikely that any of the 6 Pakistani crewmen were who they claimed to be. It is highly probable that assumed identities backed up by forged or stolen documents were used to establish the credentials that allowed them to be employed on board the Aristides.
The questions that remain are who these people really were/are, why they enlisted on the Aristides, why they disappeared and where they are now.
PK