813 guns sans personnel

Navy suspicious about MV Avant Garde’s weapon haul:

By Ranil Wijayapala

Navy investigators probing the controversial MV Avant Garde floating armoury detained off the Galle Harbour are looking into whether the Avant Garde Company had deployed 813 personnel on board various ships that sailed across Sri Lanka to the Red Sea in the past one year.

Investigators are looking into this on the basis that 813 automatic weapons had been brought to Sri Lanka from the Red Sea, according to a senior Navy official. Suspicions have also been raised about the weapons following the discovery that serial numbers had been obliterated in 59 of them. The Sri Lanka Navy found 813 weapons on board the vessel at the time of its detection. The ship crew had claimed the weapons belonged to Rakna Arakshana Lanka Ltd. (RALL).

“To bring back that number of weapons, there should have been 813 guards on board the vessels moving towards the Red Sea in the past one year because a weapon is issued per individual guard. This was the reason for the Navy to lodge a complaint with the Galle Police,” the official said.

The Galle Magistrate has ordered the detention of the ship together with the weapons until the conclusion of investigations. At present, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is conducting the probe due to the complexity of the matter.

It has been revealed that Automatic Identification System of the Avant Garde ship has indicated Colombo Port as the next port of call when the Navy detected the vessel 14 miles off the Galle Harbour and clicked on the blip on the radar.

“Navy personnel felt suspicious about the ship when they saw it sailing close to Galle, if it was sailing from the Red Sea towards the Colombo Port,” he said.

Navy sources confirmed that though the ship had claimed to have received permission to enter the Galle Harbour from the Ministry of Defence, the ship received that communiqué from the Defence Ministry two hours after the Navy has boarded the Avant Garde ship.

The Navy boarded the ship at 7.20 am on October 6.

“If the vessel adhered to international maritime law, it should have obtained permission to enter the Galle Harbour before leaving the last port of call.