Russian sailors detained, bail set Vessel suspected in collision that killed 3 fishermen

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland – A judge granted bail Wednesday to three Russian crew members of a tanker suspected of ramming a U.S. fishing boat and killing three fishermen.

The judge ordered bail set at $16,000 (Canadian) each, and required that the three remain in Newfoundland and surrender their passports.

The trio will appear again in court Sept. 13, when a date for an extradition hearing will be set. The U.S. government has 60 days to make a formal request for extradition.

Vladimir Ivanov, the captain; Dmitry Bogdanov, the second officer; and Mikhail Gerasimenko, the lookout, made a brief appearance at the hearing.

In Moscow Wednesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry protested the men’s detention in Canada and demanded they have access to consular officials.

The U.S. Coast Guard said each man has been charged with one count each of involuntary manslaughter and misconduct or neglect of ship officers resulting in death.

The charges were spelled out in a criminal complaint filed Tuesday evening in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Immediately after the complaint was filed, arrest warrants and supporting documents were telefaxed to Canadian officials, who then issued warrants for execution by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the U.S. Coast Guard said. There were no charges filed by Canadian authorities.

The men, who were headed home to Russia, were arrested at the St. John’s airport and taken into custody.

Robert Simmonds, Ivanov’s lawyer, said his client wasn’t trying to sneak away and called the airport arrests unnecessary.

“It was an arrest that could have been avoided,” he said. “They would have submitted themselves to the court. … It was embarrassing.”

Simmonds said the charges are based on innuendo and rumors. “There are no reasonable grounds to believe this vessel was the one involved in the collision,” he said.

“You have three very scared people who have no comprehension of the system here,” he said. “They’ve been bounced around for a period of days. It’s very upsetting for them.”

A spokeswoman for Primorsk Shipping Corp., Carey Dearnley, said the arrests came as a surprise because the RCMP had said earlier in the day that the crew wasn’t going to be detained.

“The company is outraged at the way its crew has been treated,” she said. “Primorsk had directed the crew to assist in executing the first search warrant [on Friday]. But since then, its crew and vessel has been mistreated and treated unlawfully. Now, after assurances by Canadian authorities that the crew would be permitted to leave, they’re under arrest.”

On Tuesday, the Russian Embassy in Ottawa filed a protest with the Canadian government after the RCMP moved the ship to another port in Newfoundland and ordered its crew to get off.

RCMP Staff Sgt. Tony Green said he couldn’t comment on the company’s allegations. Green said the crew had been removed from the boat to ensure the integrity of the investigation and the safety of the RCMP officers, Boston newspapers reported on Wednesday.

The MT Virgo, a 541-foot Cypriot-owned tanker, has been detained in Newfoundland since Aug. 7.

Coast Guard investigators say the ship is the prime suspect in the ramming and sinking two days earlier of the Starbound, an 83-foot trawler based in Rockland, Maine.

Only the Starbound’s captain survived the collision, which occurred in U.S. waters about 130 miles off the coast of Massachusetts. He has said he didn’t get a good look at the hit-and-run ship, but he’s convinced the Virgo is the vessel that hit the Starbound.

Ivanov, the Virgo captain, has confirmed his ship was in the area off Cape Ann, Mass., where the collision occurred. But he has denied seeing or hearing anything unusual.