Tehran, May 30 (IANS) Indonesia has released an Iranian oil tanker seized by the country’s coast guards earlier this year, a state media report said.
“The MT Horse, belonging to the National Iranian Tanker Company that had been detained in Indonesian waters since January 24, was released on Friday (May 28),” Xinhua news agency quoted the report as saying on Saturday.
The vessel was released after a legal battle and efforts by senior Iranian officials and “has now resumed its mission”, it added.
In January, Indonesia announced that its coast guard had “seized the Iranian-flagged MT Horse and the Panamanian-flagged MT Freya vessels for suspected illegal oil transfer in the country’s waters”.
A spokesman for the Indonesian Maritime Security Agency, Colonel Bakamla Wisnu Pramadita, claimed the two tankers concealed their identity by not showing their national flags, turning off automatic identification systems and did not respond to a radio call, the Tehran-based Press TV reported.
Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said at the time that Tehran was “waiting for more reports from the Indonesian government on the seizure of the Iranian oil tanker”.