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BY JON GAMBRELLThe Associated Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An oil tanker sought by the U.S. over allegedly circumventing sanctions on Iran was hijacked on July 5 off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, a seafarers organization said Wednes-day.

Satellite photos showed the vessel in Iranian waters on Tuesday and two of its sailors remained in the Iranian capital.

It wasn’t immediately clear what happened aboard the Dom-inica-flagged MT Gulf Sky, though its reported hijacking comes after months of tensions between Iran and the U.S.

David Hammond, the CEO of the United Kingdom-based group Human Rights at Sea, said he took a

witness statement from the captain of the MT Gulf Sky, confirming the ship had been hijacked.

Hammond said that 26 of the In-dian sailors on board had made it back to India, while two remained in Tehran, without elaborating.

“We are delighted to hear that the crew are safe and well, which has been our fundamental concern from the outset,” Hammond told The Associated Press.

Hammond said that he had no other details on the vessel.

TankerTrackers.com, a website tracking the oil trade at sea, said it saw the vessel in satellite photos on Tuesday in Iranian waters off Hor-muz Island. Hormuz Island, near the port city of Bandar Abbas, is some 120 miles north of Khorfakkan, a city on the eastern coast of the United Arab Emirates where the vessel had

been for months.The Emirati government, the U.S.

Embassy in Abu Dhabi and the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet did not respond to requests for com-ment. Iranian state media did not immediately report on the vessel and Iran’s mission to the United Na-tions did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In May, the U.S. Justice Depart-ment filed criminal charges against two Iranians, accusing them of try-ing to launder some $12 million to purchase the tanker, then named the MT Nautica, through a series of front companies. The vessel then took on Iranian oil from Kharg Is-land to sell abroad, the U.S. govern-ment said.

Court documents allege the scheme involved the Quds Force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary

Guard, which is its elite expedition-ary unit, as well as Iran’s national oil and tanker companies. The two men charged, one of whom also has an Iraqi passport, remain at large.

“Because a U.S. bank froze the funds related to the sale of the vessel, the seller never received payment,” the Justice Department said. “As a re-sult, the seller instituted a civil action in the UAE to recover the vessel.”

That civil action was believed to still be pending, raising questions of how the tanker sailed away from the Emirates after being seized by au-thorities there.

Data from the MT Gulf Sky’s Automatic Identification System tracker shows it had been turned off around 4:30 a.m. July 5, according to ship-tracking website MarineTraf-fic.com. Ships are supposed to keep their AIS trackers on, but Iranian

vessels routinely turn theirs off to mask their movements.

Meanwhile, the 28 Indian sailors on board the vessel found them-selves stuck on board without pay for months, according to the Inter-national Labor Organization. It filed a report saying the vessel and its sail-ors had been abandoned by its own-ers since March off Khorfakkan. The ILO did not respond to a request for comment.

As tensions between Iran and the U.S. heated up last year, tankers ply-ing the waters of the Mideast became targets, particularly near the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf’s narrow mouth through which 20% of all oil passes. Suspected limpet mine attacks the U.S. blamed on Iran tar-geted several tankers. Iran denied being involved, though it did seize several tankers.

Tanker sought by U.S. over Iran sanctions ‘hijacked’

BY MARK STEVENSONThe Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — President Andrés Manuel López Ob-rador is traveling to three of Mexico’s most violent states this week to counter what many call a “hands-off” strat-egy toward drug cartels that has exacerbated tensions with state governors.

A surge in cartel killings in Guanajuato, Colima and Jalis-co — all states governed by opposition parties — is threat-ening to become a political quagmire of finger-pointing for López Obrador ahead of 2021 midterm elections.

Together with Mexico’s ris-ing death toll from the corona-virus pandemic, the violence could bring an end to a hon-eymoon for the president who famously promised to tame organized crime with “hugs not bullets” and said Mexico

is no longer in the business of detaining drug capos.

With an army and Nation-al Guard distracted by the coronavirus pandemic, con-struction projects and dozens of other tasks that López Ob-rador has assigned them, it is unclear how much the presi-dent can bring to the table to fight the cartels.

“I am going to these states because they have the tough-est problems with violence and especially homicides,” López Obrador said. “I am going to support the people with my presence and tell them that despite the public, notorious differences we have with the state governments, this is a matter that concerns everyone and we have a duty to act together.”

Mexico’s president has swung between blaming governors for the country’s problems — at times even

accusing them of being in ca-hoots with cartels — and em-bracing them.

But at his first stop in Irapuato, Guanajuato on Wednesday, the message was cooperation and coordina-tion.

Gov. Diego Rodríguez announced that he had started participating in the president’s daily security cab-inet briefings.

“If I want more coordi-nation, I do have to do more on my part,” said Rodríguez, adding that he began partici-pating earlier this month four days after gunmen killed 27 men in a drug rehabilitation center in Irapuato.

A group in Guanajuato called “A Tu Encuentro” or “Finding You,” which is fight-ing to find at least 135 people who have disappeared during

the drug violence, released a video Tuesday asking for a meeting with the state’s gov-ernor and the president on Wednesday. It called for the two to set aside their differ-ences.

“I hope he (López Obra-dor) comes to help, and that his visit helps solve the vio-lence problem, and not just pour more fuel on the fire of the political confrontation be-tween the state and the feder-al governments,” group leader José Gutierrez said earlier.

All three of the states are seeing vicious cartel turf bat-tles.

In Guanajato, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the local Santa Rosa de Lima gang are engaged in a fight that has left over 1,900 people dead in the first five months of this year, including the slaughter of the recovering addicts at a rehab center in Irapuato on July 1. Accord-ing to López Obrador, 70% of these killings occurred be-tween criminal groups.

The federal government

has installed National Guard barracks at several points in Guanajuato, but the guards and the army just conduct periodic patrols. The tough work of investigating, serving arrest warrants and respond-ing to emergency calls has been left largely to state and local police, who are clearly outgunned. In the first six months of this year, about 60 police officers have been killed in Guanajuato, accord-ing to the civic group Causa en Común.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval González said there were 7,500 National Guards-men in Guanajuato and López Obrador applauded a dramatic decrease in fuel theft in the state.

“The problem grew and has been allowed to grow, and we have to look at whether there has been collusion, that is, criminal conspiracy, between the criminals and officials,” the president said after the massacre at Guanajuato re-hab center.

Mexico president visiting cartel-plagued statesSurge in killings could become a political quagmire of finger-pointing for López Obrador ahead of 2021 midterm elections.

MARCO UGARTE • The Associated PressMexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gives his daily morning news conference Monday at the presidential palace in Mexico City.