U.S. Navy Searches Suspect Vessel in Mediterranean

Yahoo News ^ | October 23 2002 | Reuters

[knighthawk]

ROME (Reuters) - U.S. navy officials boarded and searched a Tonga-registered merchant vessel in the eastern Mediterranean Wednesday in a hunt some media reports said was linked to finding members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

"At about 0400 GMT, USS Monterey conducted a compliant boarding of the merchant vessel Tara, formerly known as Christie, about 70 nautical miles south of Antalya, Turkey, in international waters," Commander Bob Ross, spokesman for the U.S. Sixth Fleet, told Reuters.

The vessel's documentation appeared to be in order, no contraband was discovered and nothing was removed from the ship, Ross said, but he added: "We will continue to examine the information we gained while aboard the ship."

Greek media reported earlier that several European and U.S. warships were searching the Mediterranean for a vessel named Christie or Tara and suspected of carrying al Qaeda members.

Washington blames bin Laden and al Qaeda for the hijacked airliner attacks on the United States on September 11 last year.

The U.S. naval spokesman said Tara had been stopped and boarded because it displayed "suspicious behavior," but would not say what that constituted or for how long U.S. forces had been monitoring the vessel.

He said the stop-and-search operation was part of a bolstering of U.S. monitoring of commercial shipping activities in the Mediterranean, and was the 14th compliant boarding conducted by the U.S. navy since January this year.

"We know that about 95 percent of the world's commerce is moved via commercial shipping and so we believe it is likely that terrorist networks would want to use commercial shipping to move material and personnel," the spokesman said.

"The purpose of the searches is, first, to protect legitimate shipping in the Mediterranean and, secondly, to deter, degrade and disrupt terrorist-related activity."

"I think we have had a deterrent effect as illegal operators are now keenly aware that we are carrying out these operations."

The spokesman said European governments and their navies were cooperating fully with the operation and that the United States was also working closely with NATO forces.

[knighthawk]

Europe-list

If people want on or off this list, please let me know.

[facedown]

Washington blames bin Laden and al Qaeda for the hijacked airliner attacks on the United States on September 11 last year.

Reuters just can't give it up, can they?

[knighthawk]

Even when OBL would march into the Reuters main office and admit he did it, Reuters would still try to denounce it.

[maranatha]

I remember Chris Matthews in Arkansas talking to middle aged, sophisticated women who were supporters of Bill Clinton, who defended him saying all the women were liars. Chris pointed out that Clinton admitted to sexual relations with (blonde, can't remember her name, she had him on tape) and the Arkansas women still denied he was involved and blamed some kind of mixup. Matthews was astounded that even with his admission, they would say he didn't do it. The liberal mind....