Finnish media on Saturday said that a ransom demand had been received from the people who hijacked the freighter "Arctic Sea". According to the Financial Times Deutschland, the hijackers have demanded a ransom of $1.5 million (1.05 million euros), but have not revealed the source of this information.

According to the well respected Russian maritime journal Sovfrakht, the ship's automatic identification signal was turned on briefly, and sent a signal at 0830GMT on Saturday August 15 before it went silent again.

Over the weekend, reports had the freighter in the neighborhood of the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa, as well as in the Bay of Biscay near France.

A French navy spokesman Jerome Baroe dismissed the report that the "Arctic Sea" was off the coast of France and said it was most likely that the ship was headed for Brazil.

Mikhail Boytenko, the editor of Sovfrakht was of the opinion that there was something a lot more sinister going on.

"I don't think that is was pirates who took this vessel but it really smells of some sort of state involvement. This is real cloak and dagger stuff, like a le Carre novel," he said according to Reuters.

Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said that Russia and NATO were coordinating their efforts to locate the ship.

Rumors about what is really going on with the ship continued to circulate. Theories range that this is some sort of Russian organized crime dispute, to the fact that the ship may be carrying some sort of mystery cargo that could possibly be of a radioactive nature, or arms for terrorists.

On July 23, the "Arctic Sea" set sail from Finland carrying a cargo of lumber bound for Algeria. While sailing through the Baltic Sea off Sweden in the early hours of the next morning, the ship was allegedly boarded by a band of up to a dozen men posing as Swedish narcotics police.

Currently there are about 20 countries looking for the ship and the Russians are using a submarine, a naval vessel and "other means" to search for the "Arctic Sea".

av/dpa/Reuters/AFP/AP
Editor: Nick Amies