{"id":12102,"date":"2020-06-22T18:28:55","date_gmt":"2020-06-22T15:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/libya-releases-14-ukrainian-seafarers-after-three-years-in-jail-2\/12102\/"},"modified":"2020-06-22T18:28:55","modified_gmt":"2020-06-22T15:28:55","slug":"libya-releases-14-ukrainian-seafarers-after-three-years-in-jail-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/libya-releases-14-ukrainian-seafarers-after-three-years-in-jail-2\/12102\/","title":{"rendered":"Libya Releases 14 Ukrainian Seafarers After Three Years in Jail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p>14 Ukrainian seafarers who were arrested off Libya in 2017 have finally returned home. None of them were ever formally charged with a crime, but officials in Tripoli held them for more than three years.<\/p>\n<p>The Ukrainian crew and their ship, the product tanker <em>Ruta<\/em>, were&nbsp;intercepted by Libyan Navy forces in April 2017 and detained for allegedly smuggling a cargo of&nbsp;diesel. The Libyan Navy asserted that an armed confrontation occurred during the interdiction, according to outlet Libya Akhbar.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;All 14 crew members were held in a cramped cell and they had to sleep in shifts,&rdquo; said the Ukrainian seafarers&#039; charity Assol in a statement. &ldquo;The incarceration conditions and psychological pressure had an effect on the sailors&rsquo; health. Two of them contracted hepatitis. Several others saw their chronic illnesses aggravated.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.president.gov.ua\/storage\/j-image-storage\/15\/63\/77\/cc82b413750cac048c236e6d6107ce10_1592568438_extra_large.jpeg\" style=\"height:400px;width:600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It took years of appeals from Assol and other aid organizations to secure the seafarers&#039; release on bail. After the prisoners threatened a hunger strike, a court approved their release and they were repatriated with a flight to Kiev.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Ukrainian government also played a role in their return: earlier this year, Ukraine appealed to Libya to release all detained Ukrainian nationals due to the risk of COVID-19 in the Libyan prison system.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Our task is to return Ukrainian citizens. I am very glad that after almost three and a half years behind bars in Libya, 14 members of the crew of the <em>Ruta <\/em>tanker returned home. I am happy for them, for their families,&quot; said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a statement.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The four Ukrainian crewmembers of the tanker <em>Captain Khayyam &#8211;&nbsp;<\/em>which was arrested in Libya in early 2016 &#8211;&nbsp;still remain in captivity, a spokesperson for Assol told Kyiv Post.<\/p>\n<p>maritime-executive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>14 Ukrainian seafarers who were arrested off Libya in 2017 have finally returned home. None of them were ever formally charged with a crime, but officials in Tripoli held them for more than three years. The Ukrainian crew and their ship, the product tanker Ruta, were&nbsp;intercepted by Libyan Navy forces in April 2017 and detained &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[7985,7982,7987,6935,7984,2834,7983,540,1255,7986,2523],"class_list":["post-12102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-assol","tag-captain-khayyam","tag-jail","tag-libya","tag-libya-akhbar","tag-releases","tag-ruta","tag-seafarers","tag-ukrainian","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/12103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}