JAKARTA: Indonesian authorities said on Friday that firearms and ammunition have been found on an Iranian supertanker, one of the two vessels seized in the country’s waters over a suspected illegal oil transfer last month.
The Iranian-flagged MT Horse and the Panamanian-flagged MT Freya were impounded by the Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla) in waters bordering the South China Sea off Pontianak, West Kalimantan province, on Jan. 24, over suspicions of illegal fuel transfer between ships, polluting the water with oil, violation of the right of innocent passage, turning off their identification systems, illegal anchorage, and not flying their national flags.
On Friday, authorities said they had also found weapons on the Iranian tanker. “Investigators found a sniper rifle, three assault rifles, two pistols, and ammunition on the Iranian-flagged tanker MT Horse,” Bakamla spokesperson Col. Wisnu Pramandita told Arab News.
Earlier on Friday, Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Mahfud MD said during a joint press conference with Bakamla that all other suspicions had also been confirmed.
“We concluded they deliberately did all those violations, and they were caught doing them in tandem,” he said, as Bakamla chief Vice Admiral Aan Kurnia told reporters that the two tankers had trespassed 25 nautical miles into Indonesia’s territorial waters when the agency caught them.
The tankers were impounded after a patrol ship detected an idle signal indicating that the automatic identification system of the vessels was turned off. When Bakamala personnel arrived at the location they caught the tankers conducting a ship-to-ship fuel transfer from MT Horse to MT Freya, with their hulls covered to conceal their identities.
The vessels have been anchored at Bakamla’s base in Batam, Riau Islands province near Singapore, since their seizure.
Investigators are still questioning 25 crew from the MT Horse and 36 Chinese crew members of the MT Freya, which is managed by a Shanghai-based company.
Deputy Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Sugeng Purnomo said the inter-departmental task force investigating the case will soon press charges against the suspects.
In the wake of the incident, Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi has ordered stricter law enforcement in the country’s waters, ministry spokesperson Adita Irawati told Arab News.
“We are committed to enforcing the law on Indonesia’s territorial waters, in accordance also with the international law as enforced by the International Maritime Organization,” Irawati said.
Indonesia finds weapons on impounded Iranian tanker
https://arab.news/yxvn4
Indonesia finds weapons on impounded Iranian tanker
- Vessel was seized along with Panamanian ship in January
- Crew members face charges including violation of the right to innocent passage
Single ‘digital nation-state’ is not a far-fetched notion, Melania Trump tells UN Security Council
- US first lady argues that AI and global connectivity could reshape education, help reduce conflict and empower children worldwide
- Societies rooted in knowledge foster innovation, tolerance and moral reasoning, while those shaped by ignorance risk disorder and conflict, she says
NEW YORK CITY: The idea of a single digital nation-state is “not so far-fetched,” US First Lady Melania Trump told the UN Security Council on Monday.
She argued that artificial intelligence and global connectivity could reshape education, help reduce conflict and empower children worldwide.
The US holds the rotating presidency of the council for March, and as she presided over its first meeting of the month Trump said technology was erasing borders and creating what she described as a shared intellectual future.
“Perhaps this idea isn’t so far-fetched,” she said, pointing to the rise of digital currencies, blockchain-based payment systems, and AI-driven databases she argued were already transforming media and financial markets.
Trump thanked the US’s fellow council members — the UK, France, Russia, China, Greece, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Denmark, Panama, Liberia, Somalia, Colombia, Pakistan, Bahrain and Latvia — for their role in efforts to maintain international security.
The responsibility for preventing conflict “must be applied evenly and should never be carried out lightly,” she said. Her remarks focused in particular on the role of education as the foundation of peace and stability.
“A nation that makes learning sacred protects its books, its language, its science and its mathematics. It protects its future,” Trump said, arguing that societies rooted in knowledge foster innovation, tolerance and moral reasoning, while those shaped by ignorance risk disorder and conflict.
Education is widely recognized as a fundamental human right, she added, yet many children and young adults around the world remain barred from the chance to attend high school or university. The losses arising from this squandered potential, from potential medical breakthroughs to possible advances in food security and technology, are borne not only by the individual countries involved but by humanity as a whole, she said.
Trump called for the expansion of global access to technology to help bridge the digital divide, noting that about 6 billion people, 70 percent of the world’s population, now use mobile devices and the internet.
“If our nations band together, we can close the technological divide,” she said, describing a world in which a farmer on a remote Greek island, a student in Somalia and a resident of New York City can all tap into centuries of accumulated human knowledge.
AI was democratizing access to information once confined to university libraries, she added, and redefining participation in the global “economy of ideas.”
She continued: “Conflict arises from ignorance. Knowledge creates understanding, replacing fear with peace and unity.”
Trump called on council members to safeguard learning and promote access to higher education, urging them to “build a future generation of leaders who embrace peace through education.”
She added: “The path to peace depends on us taking responsibility to empower our children through education and technology.”
