Fourteen Ukrainian sailors, the full crew of the oil tanker Ruta, have returned to Ukraine after more than three years spent imprisoned in Libya. A special flight chartered by the Ukrainian government for the sailors landed at Boryspil International Airport outside Kyiv on June 19.
“It is our mission to return our citizens (home),” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said while meeting the sailors on the runway strip. “I am happy for them and for their families.”
The tanker Ruta, registered in Odesa, was arrested in Libyan territorial waters in April 2017 on charges of oil smuggling. The 14-member crew was thrown in jail in the country’s capital, Tripoli.
“All 14 crew members were held in a cramped cell and they had to sleep in shifts,” Ukraine-based charity Assol, which advocated for the sailors’ rights, said in a June 19 statement. “The incarceration conditions and psychological pressure had an effect on the sailors’ health. Two of them contracted hepatitis. Several others saw their chronic illnesses aggravated.”
The Libyan authorities never officially indicted the crew or launched a court trial. As Ukraine’s Presidential Office noted, that procedure stalled due to the “complicated domestic political and security situation” in Libya.
After the 2011 civil war, during which the country’s longtime ruler Muammar Qaddafi was ousted and killed during a Western military intervention, Libya plunged into chaos. Since 2014, a prolonged multi-sided civil war has raged in the Middle Eastern country.
To this day, the United Nations-backed provisional government in Tripoli continues to wage war against rebel warlord Khalifa Haftar, who is backed militarily by Russia.
According to charity organization Assol, the Libyan authorities ceased investigating the Ruta case after 8 months of detention, without making any decision on the crew’s fate.
“As stated in international maritime law, crew members are liable for freight shipment only,” the organization said.
“And they are not responsible for transport licenses and permissions. It is the freight owner who is responsible for that. All instructions from the shipowner were sent to the ship’s captain via email. During the arrest, the computer was expropriated by the Libyans, and the crew was not given a chance to prove itself not guilty.”
The organization noted that, since 2005, the vessel was operated by company Manchester Shipping S.A., which is also registered in Odesa, according to open-source maritime databases.
In May 2020, the desperate Ukrainian sailors were reported to have gone on hunger strike, demanding that they be allowed to return home.
Eventually, after years of Ukrainian charities, diplomats and activists putting pressure on Libyan authorities, a Tripoli court finally ruled to allow the crew to leave the country after bail was paid.
Later, the crew was transported to the city of Misurata, some 450 kilometers east of Tripoli, and taken safely to Kyiv.
“Those guys are finally home, but thousands of Ukrainian sailors are still experiencing crisis situations, including detention,” said Svitlana Fabrikant, the Assol charity chairwoman.
She said she was referring to Ukrainian sailors who have to serve 12- to 14-month contracts without breaks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, “hundreds of our compatriots in Turkish, Greek and Italian prisons on charges of illegally trafficking migrants” and the Ukrainian crew members of the ships Captain Khayyam and Tecne.
Captain Khayyam was arrested in Libya in February 2016. The Tecne sailors have been held in a Nigerian jail since 2017 on charges that Fabrikant terms “fabricated.”
“Our struggle is not over,” she said.
