Install

Get the latest updates as we post them — right on your browser

Today's paper. Last Updated: 05/29/2012

Sailors Face Trial for Murder

ROUEN, France -- An investigating judge has ruled that five sailors from a Ukrainian merchant ship should be tried for murder for allegedly throwing eight African stowaways overboard, prosecutors said on Thursday.


Following a two-year investigation, the judge recommended that Vladimir Ilnitskiy, captain of the MC Ruby, be charged with the lesser offense of complicity in kidnapping, prosecutors said.


The case goes back to November 1992, when the Ruby's crew discovered seven Ghanaians and a Cameroonian who had stowed away on a trip from the Ghanaian port of Takoradi to the French port of Le Havre.


According to Ofusu Kingsley, a ninth stowaway, the crew threw the eight men into the sea, where they perished.


Kingsley, who managed to evade detection and later told his story to authorities, is now a dishwasher in a Le Havre restaurant.


Prosecutors said the investigating judge's report accused crewmen Dzamal Arakhamiya, Petr Bondarenko, Sergei Romashenko, Oleg Mikhailevskiy and Valery Artemenko of kidnapping as well as murder.


The crewmen and the captain are being detained pending trial in three different jails in northwestern France.


The MC Ruby is owned by MC Shipping Inc of New York, which said the detained crew members were not employees of the company.




This article has no comments.

Be the first to leave a comment


Discussion
The Moscow Times welcomes your comments and invites you to discuss topics with other readers. Your comment will be posted automatically to enable a live discussion. If you aren't familiar with our comments policy, you can read it here.

If you're a registered user, you can start typing your comment below. If not, take a moment to sign up. and then return to the article.

If your comment doesn't appear, contact us by using our web form.

Comments

Comments via Facebook



print


Comments

This article has no comments.

Be the first to leave a comment





Most Read
 

Nineteen Years Ago Today the Gay Community Celebrated

The Russian parliament has repealed a longstanding and controversial law that had classified consensual sex between men a criminal offense, a Western gay rights group in Moscow said Friday.