Various theories on missing Russian-manned cargo ship

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The disappearance of a Russian-manned cargo ship in the Atlantic has spawned a variety of theories. Meanwhile, Russia has taken every necessary measure to try to recover the ship.

The Arctic Sea, is a Maltese-flagged cargo ship, with 15 Russian crew on board and a 1.3 million US dollar cargo of timber. It was due to make port in Algeria, but did not arrive and appeared to have changed course.

Speculation about what might have happened has ranges from theories that it might have been carrying a secret cargo to the possibility it fell victim to a rare case of sea banditry in European waters.

The Swedish Daily Metro quoted the ship's captain as saying that the ship was attacked four days earlier in the Baltic Sea off the Swedish island of Oland.

While the Malta Maritime Authority says that on July 24th, up to a dozen masked men in black uniforms boarded. They tied up the 15 crew, questioned them about drug trafficking, and beat them before leaving 12 hours later in a high-speed inflatable boat.

Security experts were wary of attributing the disappearance to bandits.

Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, Dryad Maritine Intelligence, said, "The classical business model for piracy, if you like, relies on a poor security infrastructure, usually crushing poverty in the areas where it exists. This is really unusual but it follows a line of incidents that we've seen in the Mediterranean where organized criminal gangs have got involved in what is essentially piracy because there are big gains to be made."