The Ocean Dove

by Carlos Luxul

  Leading ballistics experts have informed The Sunday Times how the terrorists were able to do this, advising that each individual shell was capable of being coded with its own unique target, either by being programmed with precise map coordinates, a photographic image, or laser guidance.

  London is now burying its dead, caring for its injured and counting the financial cost. A spokesman for the BBA (British Banking Association) said last week that though there has been a catastrophic loss of staff and dealing rooms are out of action, business is still ongoing through satellite and overseas branches, and sentiment among customers is coming down strongly on maintaining trade. However, the situation in the insurance and reinsurance sector is markedly more sombre. Philip Walters, Chief Commercial Officer at Lloyd’s, said, ‘We have only just started to quantify the scale of claims, but it seems clear that the model is fundamentally broken on a global scale.’ His views were echoed by a leading broker. ‘Just where is the money going to come from to settle claims? The ramifications will be felt for decades.’

  Realistic estimates have been in short supply during the week and figures ranging from five hundred billion to five trillion pounds have been circulating in the markets, amid further complications posed by the status of the attack. Insurance experts have said that it is unlikely to be designated as an act of war, and is more likely to be classified as terrorism, which can often be both a grey area in insurance contracts and a specific ‘add on’ that many policyholders will not have defined and paid for.

  Financial regulators across global markets are cooperating on forensic analysis, where shorting of vulnerable indices and companies has been identified, particularly in the insurance sector. Patterns are emerging of a trading surge in the days leading up to the atrocity that suggest massive bets – or shorts – were placed against the decline in value of insurance stocks. Estimates vary, but the gains are thought to run into the hundreds of millions. One insider commented: ‘It seems to have gone around the world markets, comprehensively spread against global and domestic players – basically a hedge against all insurance companies wherever they operate.’ Another said, ‘Insurance has had its challenges, but global sentiment suggests it’s got through the worst, stabilised and looked set for steady trading over the next couple of years. So to bet against it now is counter-intuitive.’ More worrying for the authorities is the implication that suggests prior knowledge of the attack and its consequent effect, but, as yet, no details are emerging of who placed the trades, or their verified scale.

  Globally, the reaction has been largely of the deepest and most profound shock, with crowds holding vigils at British embassies around the world where they have laid flowers and other tributes. Churches of all denominations have held special services and reported record attendances. The Pope held a service of remembrance in St Peter’s Square last Sunday and will do so again today as the world reflects on the scale of loss. Funds continue to pour in from thousands of donation sites and pledges from foreign governments and the UN.

  Not everywhere was the attack met with grief and sympathy. Islamic strongholds in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Somalia celebrated long into the night of Friday the 10th. In Iran the authorities were initially slow to quell the exuberance amid a cacophony of car horns. Crowds of young people took to the streets across the Islamic world, but their mood was not reflected across the breadth of their communities with many dismissing them as ‘hotheads’, and others openly crying ‘shame’. The authorities in Saudi Arabia were quick to impose a robust police and military presence, where celebrations were quickly dispersed. Across North Africa from Morocco to Egypt the scenes were largely repeated, only for crowds to melt away as security forces moved quickly to establish order. In France, inner-city Paris, Lyon and Marseille saw cars set on fire in Muslim areas, though police and riot squads were quick to move in. Elsewhere across Europe the mood was more subdued as tensions rose and residents stayed in their own areas where they felt more secure.

  Domestically, tensions were high in Britain, where vigilante mobs gathered on the edges of Muslim communities only to be met with a strong police and military cordon. Community leaders from both sides have largely dismissed the actions as born of frustration rather than a clear intent to seek retribution, though many Muslims are concerned, staying close to home and hoping that time will give the charged atmosphere time to settle. The looting in the West End on Friday afternoon and the early part of the evening that appalled so many people is now seen by many commentators to have been overestimated. Officials say the scale is lower than previously thought and concentrated among a small number of groups who acted swiftly and opportunistically. When martial law was declared on Friday and soldiers fired warning shots, eyewitnesses reported that suspects were quick to retreat.

  Politically, a consensus was quickly reached, with opposition MPs pledging a willingness to keep political considerations in the background and the government opening its committees and action groups to cross-party membership. ‘We need a government of talent now, not of political loyalty,’ said one MP – a view echoed across Westminster last week.

  But there are questions that need to be answered, questions from the opposition, from government, from the public and the global community. As the initial shock begins to subside, the fundamental questions in every mind are: who did this and how did they do it? To answer part of this we need to go back to just before Christmas last year.

  On Saturday, 5 December, a Danish freighter, the Danske Prince, was in the middle of the Indian Ocean. In its hold were four Bofors guns and forty thousand rounds of ammunition for delivery to the Indian navy. At 17.20 its distress beacon was picked up by the InMarSat organisation and a rescue attempt was launched. The first ship to respond was the Ocean Dove, a freighter owned by the OceanBird Shipping Company of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Early on the following Monday, a French frigate arrived to coordinate the search-and-rescue attempts.

  Signals and satellite imagery showed the Ocean Dove had been between ten and twenty miles from the Danske Prince when it blew up and sank with the loss of its eight-man crew. It now seems these signals were manipulated. Only speculation can suggest where the Ocean Dove actually was and how it lured the Danske Prince to its fate. But it seems clear the Ocean Dove ‘acquired’ the guns and ammunition and was instrumental in the sinking and likely murder of the Danske Prince’s crew. No bodies have been found and there is no clear evidence, but sources close to The Sunday Times assure us there is no suggestion of collusion between the ships and this is not an avenue of enquiry the authorities are pursuing.

  At first, the Ocean Dove was not suspected of any involvement in what appeared to be a tragic accident at sea – it even received plaudits from the international shipping community for its efforts to aid the Danske Prince in its apparent distress. The next morning it sailed for Bar Mhar in Pakistan, where it is thought to have unloaded its stolen cargo. For the next four months it traded as a regular cargo ship in international waters, before returning to Bar Mhar in April where it is thought the guns were fitted in its hold before a voyage around the southern cape of Africa to London.

  International security officials were swift to raid the offices of OceanBird in Sharjah, its sister company STC (Sharjah Trade and Commerce), and the shipyard at Bar Mhar, where all key officials of the companies had already vanished, leaving behind scores of bewildered junior staff who are now held in secure locations and assisting the authorities in the ongoing enquiry.

  STC is suspected of acting as a key intermediary in the scheme, by buying the defunct Moritz Chemical Company plant from US property investment fund Red Oak LLC, which had acquired the company and its site for development. In a further twist, the two leading executives from Red Oak who negotiated the sale were both killed during the bombardment of the investment community clustered around London’s Berkeley Square. Though usually based in Red Oak’s Moscow office, the pair had travelled to London for a management meeting. Security experts suggest that though
STC paid around USD 3.5 million for the plant and its dismantling and packing for shipment, it never had any intention of taking it back to the UAE for recommissioning. The financial outlay was purely part of a subterfuge, specifically to enable the ship to moor at an isolated location as close to Central London as possible.

  International arrest warrants have been issued for OceanBird’s CEO, Bulent Erkan, a thirty-six-year-old Turkish national; Rashid Al Hammadi, thirty-two, CEO of STC and a UAE national; Jawad Balal, thirty-two, a Lebanese national and head of process at STC’s chemical subsidiary; and Hassan Khan, forty-four, a Pakistan national and CEO of Bar Mhar Marine Engineering Company.

  At 6 a.m. on Friday the 10th a pilot boarded the ship off the Kent coast and guided it to the Moritz facility. The pilot, who does not wish to be named and is recovering at an unnamed location, has expressed his deep shock at the unwitting part he played in the dramatic events. ‘There was nothing suspicious about them. The crew seemed so normal, friendly, good at their jobs. And it was a well-run ship.’

  His comments have been repeated by all those who were connected with the OceanBird Shipping Company, STC and the Bar Mhar shipyard. There is profound shock and bewilderment in their respective industry sectors as suppliers and customers recoil from the enormity of events, unable to match the actions of the alleged perpetrators with their impressions of them on a daily basis. Once again, the world is dismayed at the prospect of terrorists living clandestine lives in plain sight, often as well-liked and respected members of their communities.

  A little after 10 a.m. the Ocean Dove moored at the Moritz dock. A customs inspector had travelled to the disused facility to clear the ship and deal with the crew’s immigration formalities, an innocent official going about his work, who was found murdered on board by the SAS troop who subsequently stormed the ship a few hours later. His fate was tragically mirrored by two security guards manning the gatehouse at the Moritz works.

  It was now noon and the terrorists had the facility to themselves. They had prepared the ship and they were ready to fire, which they did at precisely 12.00. The last shell was fired at 12.39 as two Apache helicopters swooped down and attacked with automatic cannon rounds and Hellfire missiles, killing some of the crew on board and crippling the ship, which drifted out of control until it ran aground a short distance downstream. Experts estimate that the four guns mounted in the Ocean Dove, which in combination can fire almost a thousand rounds per minute at a range of nearly ten miles, had fired in excess of 38,000 rounds by 12.39.

  By now an SAS squad had arrived on the scene, who boarded the ship and fought running gun battles with the remaining crew. No injuries were sustained by the SAS, but the entire crew of fourteen aboard the Ocean Dove were all pronounced dead shortly after one o’clock. With no survivors, the task facing the security services is further hindered as they grapple to understand the atrocity and trace its ringleaders. ‘If just one of them had survived – we could sweat him,’ a Special Branch counterterrorism officer said with regret.

  The ship has been refloated by salvage experts and towed to a secure facility at Rochester, where it is undergoing an intensive forensic examination. The names and nationalities of the crew have not been released through official channels yet, though information is circulating freely on the internet.

  The Ocean Dove is a typical cargo ship, a hundred and fifteen metres long and capable of carrying five thousand tonnes of freight. Its owner, OceanBird, also owned a sister ship among its fleet, the Ocean Tern, which was sold in March to new owners in Singapore. The sale is now seen by many as a straightforward money-raising exercise to fund the acquisition of the Moritz plant and the Ocean Dove’s journey to London. OceanBird, through its hard-working and respected CEO, Bulent Erkan, had built a reputation within the shipping community. Erkan was well known and well thought of in Hamburg and Rotterdam, where he had spent many years working with established shipowning companies, building his networks and knowledge. In London, OceanBird was represented by BDN, a listed company and one of the largest shipbroking services in the global market.

  Four floors below OceanBird in a typical Sharjah office building was STC, a trading house with separate manufacturing plants producing cement and chemicals. The company had been built up by Saeed Al Hammadi – father of the CEO, Rashid Al Hammadi – over the preceding thirty years, and was seen as a pillar of the Sharjah business community, as was Al Hammadi himself, who enjoyed close links to the ruling family and a fearsome reputation for tenacity. Sidelined by a heart condition eighteen months ago, he handed control to his son. We also understand, by coincidence, Saeed Al Hammadi died in his sleep on Thursday, 9 June, the night before the attack. His son, Rashid, is said by those who know him to lack his father’s grit, but was nevertheless seen as a capable if less than inspiring leader of the company.

  Working under him and heading STC’s manufacturing capability, was Jawad Balal, who flew to Moscow shortly after the new year to negotiate the purchase of the Moritz plant. A week before his trip he had travelled to London to inspect the machinery. Aged thirty-two, born and brought up in Lebanon, he is well known in the Gulf and wider industry circles and had been tipped as a rising star.

  It is also known that barely ten days before the attack, STC was sold to venture-capitalist investors from Singapore, who have effectively acquired a worthless shell. A spokesperson said: ‘In good faith we made an investment in a respectable company. How could we know they were cynically cashing-out …’

  The fourth fugitive is Hassan Khan, boss of the shipyard in Pakistan and once again a respected figure in his field. It is suspected that it was his engineering skills that enabled the Ocean Dove, a typical freighter, to be converted with such devastating effect into what effectively became a fighting ship. Unnamed sources have revealed that ingenious engineering modifications were carried out to the ship, the Bofors guns and their loading mechanisms.

  What evidently links these four is their positions of influence, their qualifications – all are degree educated – and their ability to operate in plain sight. What is not clear is how they organised themselves. Could it be that they independently cooperated in a scheme of their own design, or is there a deeper link to an umbrella organisation? If there is, it has yet to be identified. Tellingly, no plausible body has yet come forward to claim responsibility for the attack. How did these four men organise themselves, independently or as part of a wider conspiracy?

  These are among the questions facing the security services and the government as they struggle to come to terms with the catastrophic failure firstly to detect the threat of attack and then subsequently to deal with it. It was 12.39 before two Apache attack helicopters arrived on the scene and 12.52 before the first RAF fighter jets appeared – fully five embarrassing minutes after American F-16s swooped through Docklands.

  Security insiders speak of a confused response that saw a breakdown in basic communication and chains of command, systemic failures in the government’s HITS (High Integrity Telecommunications System) and MTPAS (Mobile Telecoms Privileged Access System), and ultimately in the COBRA crisis-management centre (Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms) which was established to spearhead the government’s management and response to incidents of this nature.

  Seasoned observers and former officers of the security services have spoken of the intensity of the running battle now raging between the nation’s security pillars. One former officer, who requested anonymity, said, ‘It seems a junior MI5 officer picked up the Ocean Dove months ago but couldn’t get his superiors to take his suspicions seriously. Then the file was shelved and passed to MI6, who did little about it.’

  At 2.30 on Friday, the Deputy Director General of MI5, Edmund LaSalle, and one other man as yet unidentified but noted by Downing Street press observers to be in a dishevelled state from injuries he presumably sustained in the attack, were seen arriving for a high-level meeting at Number Ten. They emerged without comment shortly after three o’clock.

  Insider
rumours also speak of the actions of an off-duty operative from MI5 commandeering a helicopter close to the M11 motorway, identifying the Ocean Dove at the Moritz plant and coordinating the security response from the air. As one former senior officer said, ‘If that’s true, it’s an unimaginable indictment on the entire security apparatus across government, the security services and the military.’

  Questions are also being asked as to why the UK does not have a ship-security programme, similar to the one America introduced in response to the 9/11 attacks. Foreign cargo vessels en route to US ports are obliged to give advance notice of their impending arrival, for the Department for Homeland Security, working with the US Coastguard, to vet potential security risks and where appropriate physically inspect ships at predetermined locations offshore, before clearance to proceed to a port or ports is granted.

  Eight days after the UK suffered its worst loss of life in a single day since the First World War, questions remain unanswered. Who are these people that wreaked havoc among us? How were they able to do it? Why were we so incapable of preventing it? These questions will reverberate through our society for generations to come as we count the cost of our losses, mourn our dead and rebuild our city.

  In all the bewilderment and pain, there is only one clear fact – this dove did not come in peace.