A vessel was boarded Thursday by at least four armed people in the Gulf of Oman and has diverted course toward Iranian territorial waters, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said.
The ship’s Company Security Officer reported hearing unknown voices over the phone, after which communications with the vessel were lost, UKMTO said. The reported seizure happened early Thursday morning (around 10:30 p.m. ET Wednesday) in waters between Iran and Oman.
The armed “unauthorized” people who boarded the vessel were wearing military-style black uniforms with masks, the UK naval information service said.
A maritime monitoring website, Tanker Trackers, said the vessel seized was a Marshall Islands-flagged crude oil tanker named St Nikolas, formerly known as the Suez Rajan.
The Suez Rajan, which was at the center of a dispute between the United States and Iran, was seized by the US government last year after a court found that it was used to “covertly sell and transport Iranian oil to a customer abroad,” the US Department of Justice said in a press release.
The DOJ said “multiple entities” affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were involved in the scheme to “disguise the origin of the oil” and illegally sell it to China, according to court documents.
Almost 1 million barrels of Iranian crude oil were seized by the US government at the time, the DOJ said.
In April last year, the company operating the ship that was carrying the oil, Empire Navigation, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The Suez Rajan transported the contraband to the United States and “incurred the significant expenses associated with the vessel’s voyage to the United States,” according to the DOJ.
CNN has contacted Empire Navigation and the Iranian mission at the United Nations for comment.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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