A court has arrested the Nord, a vessel detained in the Sea of Azov on March 25, the press secretary for Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Larysa Sarhan, has said.
“We continue to work on the detained vessel Nord. In particular, today the court granted the petition of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which arrests this ship,” Sarhan wrote in her Twitter microblog on March 30.
As reported, the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service detained the Russian seiner with ten Russian citizens on board on March 25. Sailors stayed in the port of Berdiansk (Zaporizhia region of Ukraine) and were forbidden to leave the ship.
The captain of the vessel, Vladimir Gorbenko, is charged under Article 332-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (violation of the order of entry/exit to the occupied territory of Ukraine with the aim of harming the interests of the country). He faces restriction of freedom for up to three years or imprisonment for the same period.
Other crewmembers are charged under Part 2, Article 204 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of Ukraine (illegal border crossing), and could be fined from 100 to 300 non-taxable minimum incomes of citizens or get 15 days of administrative arrest.
