North Korean ship carrying hidden ’missile equipment’ detained after leaving Cuba

Ricardo Martinelli        ✔ @rmartinelli

Panamá capturo barco de bandera Norcoreana proveniente de cuba con cargamento bélico no declarado pic.twitter.com/MdWGfbXvVJ

 worldnews

By Ian Johnston and F. Brinley Bruton, NBC News

A North Korean ship carrying what is believed to be “sophisticated missile equipment” hidden in sugar containers was stopped while returning home from Cuba, Panama’s president said late Monday.

Speaking to Radio Panama, President Ricardo Martinelli said the captain of the ship tried to kill himself after officials began searching the consignment of sugar.

The vessel, which Martinelli did not name, was heading for the Panama Canal when it was stopped. It was then taken the port of Manzanillo to be searched.

“We suspected that it was carrying drugs and we brought it to port and we started verifying everything that was on the ship,” he said. “We started disembarking the sugar and found some containers that we believe are carrying sophisticated missile equipment."

Martinelli said that the ship was being held while a “more thorough investigation” was carried out.

He added that officials had taken photographs of the arms – one of which he posted on Twitter – “so that the world knows that you can’t transfer non-declared, war-like material through the Panama Canal.” 

“The Panama Canal is a canal of peace not of war,” he told the radio station.

Panamanian authorities have detained some 35 crew members, Reuters reported.

The vessel “aroused suspicion by the violent reaction of the captain and the crew from Friday afternoon,” Panama's Security Minister Jose Raul Mulino told the radio station, according to AFP.

And Javier Caraballo, an anti-drugs enforcement official, said: "Until now we have not found drugs in the boat, we found military equipment."

A spokeswoman for the Panama Canal told Reuters she did not have any more information and referred questions to the attorney general.  The attorney general's office did not immediately return requests for comment.

In April, Admiral Sam Locklear told Congress that the U.S. was capable of intercepting a missile launched by North Korea.

This came after months of heightened tensions due to missile and nuclear bomb tests by the North, during which it threatened to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against U.S. and South Korean targets.

In October, 2012, North Korea claimed that the U.S. mainland was “within the scope” of its missiles.

There are fears Pyongyang is trying to build a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to the U.S.

Reuters contributed to this report.