UPDATE - Ship attacked off Nigeria not Turkish-owned: Company

UPDATES WITH MORE DETAILS; REWRITTEN AND RE-EDITED THROUGHOUT

By Sena Guler

ANKARA (AA) - Though almost all of its kidnapped crew were Turkish nationals, the cargo ship that was attacked off Nigeria over the weekend is not Turkish-owned or registered in Turkey, said a Turkish marine company executive on Monday.

"The ship is not Turkish-owned or Turkish-flagged," Levent Karsan, the director-general of Istanbul-based Boden, told a press conference on the Turkish sailors who were kidnapped by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea on Saturday.

Following Saturday’s attack, the Liberian-flagged cargo ship Mozart on Sunday anchored at Port-Gentil, Gabon, but with only three surviving crew members on board.

Turkey is doing everything it can to get 15 kidnapped sailors back – whose whereabouts are unknown – though to date the pirates have not made contact with Turkish officials, according to Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Karsan said the ship belongs to foreign investors and his company was only responsible for the vessel's technical management.

The ship is managed by Borealis Maritime, a firm based in London and Hamburg, Germany, Karsan said.

When the ship docked in Gabon, the body of an Azerbaijani engineer who lost his life in the attack was brought to shore, and will be brought to Turkey via Turkish Airlines and then to neighboring Azerbaijan, he said.

The remaining two members still on the ship, the head engineer and the captain, are in good condition, Karsan said.

A team to replace the crew members on board will fly to Gabon within two days, Karsan said, while the survivors will be brought back to Turkey.

He added that though his company does not hire the crew members, it is responsible for checking their qualifications.

In the Saturday pirate attack, out of 19 or 20 crew members, 15 were kidnapped and three remained with the pirates – both groups all apparently Turkish nationals – while one Azerbaijani crew member was killed.