Dynacom Finds Hijacked Tanker. Crew Faked Attack, Angola’s Navy Accuses

Dynacom, a Greece-based owner of the oil tanker “Kerala”, which went missing from the radar last week offshore Angola, today said that it had re-established contact with the vessel on Sunday, January 26. The company said that the pirates stole a large amount of cargo.

“All crew members are alive and accounted for, but one is wounded and all have clearly been affected by their ordeal,” Dynacom said.

The company did not provide any information on the pirates’ origin, but Myriad Maritime last week said that Nigerian-based criminals could be responsible for the attack.

If the pirates were indeed from Nigeria this would be the furthest south that Nigerian-based criminals had struck for the purposes of refined product cargo theft.

Faked hijack?

However, not everybody believes the Dynacom story. Angola’s navy has accused the vessel’s crew of turning off the radio on purpose. According to Reuters, the navy’s spokesman Captain Augusto Alfredo said that the navy found no evidence of piracy off Angola, adding that the “Kerala” crew deliberately disabled the communications and faked the attack.

He wouldn’t go into details about the possible motives behind these alleged actions.