ഒരു ചരക്കുകപ്പലും 20 ജീവനക്കാരും വൻ മയക്കുമരുന്ന് വേട്ടയും: തെളിവുകളില്ലാതെ ജയിലിലായ നാവികന്റെ കഥ

In the early hours of 6 October 2023, Elena Albokhari was woken by a text message from her husband. Ali Albokhari, 42, a Finnish-Syrian with dark hair and cherubic features, was chief mate on a cargo ship named the Phoenician M and had been at sea since June. The 180-metre bulk carrier had docked at Ereğli in the Turkish Black Sea a few days earlier and Ali was due to return home to Helsinki soon, but instead of feeling excitement, Elena was growing increasingly worried about his welfare.

She’d had a similar feeling of unease a month earlier, when the ship had arrived at Barranquilla, Colombia. Ali had called in a panic to report that drugs had been found; Armada Nacional officers had marched onboard and uncovered holdalls stuffed with 137kg cocaine. Labels on the packages – the crest of Turkish football club Kayserispor – hinted at their destination: Turkey was the next port of call. “I never want to work as a seaman again,” Ali told Elena. “We are having big problems.”

For two days, the ship was held at the port. Elena, 39, a tour guide from Russia, was so anxious, she could barely sleep. Then she received a photo from Ali of the crew happily drinking beer in a restaurant – the drugs had been removed and, after a meeting with the harbourmaster, the ship cleared to depart. “So will you go on working as a seaman?” Elena asked. “Yeah,” Ali said. “Sometimes it happens … so it’s OK.”

Yet when the Phoenician M arrived at Ereğli on 2 October, loaded with coal, it was targeted by Turkish narcotics officers. The ship’s captain, Marko Bekavac, 63, a steely Croatian with three decades’ experience as a seafarer, had already informed the ship’s management company about the incident in Colombia, and when Turkish authorities boarded, he immediately declared that drugs had previously been found on the ship. Despite this, officers delivered a statement: should anything be found onboard, he would be accountable.

The 20 crew members, including citizens of Russia, Ukraine, Poland and the Philippines, were ordered to remain in the ship’s mess room as the police continued to investigate. Nothing was found in an initial search but days later, as the coal was unloaded, suspicious bags were reportedly found buried in the cargo hold. They were packed with more cocaine. The captain and other crew were escorted from the ship.

Ali, who was second in command, remained onboard as unloading continued. He had managed to keep hold of his phone and was sending Elena updates. These had done little to allay her fears. Now, in the middle of the night, a text message confirmed the worst: “They are going to arrest us.”

Unless WE are related to a seafarer, or live near a major port, most of us don’t encounter the people who work in shipping. Yet without them our lives would grind to a halt. Oceanic trade routes are the thread that weaves the world together. Merchant shipping – often described as the “lifeblood of the global economy” – is responsible for the movement of 90% of trade; every year, 11bn tonnes of goods, from coffee to fuel to fashion, are transported by ship. The scale of the maritime infrastructure is staggering, but the 2.57 million seafarers who operate within it remain largely invisible, as do many of the challenges they face.

Elena never thought of Ali’s work as inherently risky, and the life of a merchant seaman can seem mundane. Cargo ships travel at around 15 knots (17mph). A boat like the Phoenician M can take more than two weeks to traverse the Atlantic. The routine involves inspections, maintenance checks, paperwork and long stretches at sea. But seafarers have become vulnerable to rapidly shifting conflicts – from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the battle around the strait of Hormuz – as well as poor regulatory oversight, abandonment by shipowners and abuse by port authorities. Seafarers’ rights are frequently neglected and they are too easily scapegoated for events outside their control. When an incident occurs, it is often far easier for authorities to pursue crew members than the shipping companies that employ them, who have an incentive to let the blame fall on individuals, and the P&I (protection and indemnity) clubs that insure them are there to serve the company, not individual crew members. The very nature of the job means voyaging to far-flung destinations, so if things do go wrong, seafarers can be forced to navigate unfamiliar judicial systems, with discretionary legal support, and face long periods of detention in a foreign country. Data on the scale of the problem is limited, but one 2018 survey by Nautilus International, the maritime professionals’ union, found that 90% of seafarers feared criminalisation above anything else. A recent survey by InterManager, the ship management association, has compiled 118 known cases over the past three decades, with a peak of 23 cases in 2023. Senior officers are most at risk; in 63% of cases, the captain was imprisoned.

Cases of seafarer criminalisation range from fuel smuggling allegations to collisions, but of particular concern is the global drug trade. Much like any other commodity, the vast majority of cocaine is transported by sea. Ports in Colombia are key export hubs. Cargo ships are up to 400 metres long and usually have just a couple of dozen crew; it’s not hard to find a place to hide something on them. In 2019, Capt Andrzej Lasota, a Polish seafarer, spent two years in prison in Mexico after 240kg of cocaine – planted on the ship at Barranquilla – was uncovered during unloading at Altamira. He was charged with “negligence” for failing to be aware of the drugs buried under coal in the cargo hold.

The case was widely condemned, and resonates with that of the Phoenician M. Ali is now the only crew member who remains imprisoned, three years after his arrest. The International Maritime Organization has said the case “demonstrates how vulnerable seafarers are when they fall victim to organised international crime”. The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), a union that represents seafarers, described it as a “gross abuse” of human rights.

As a seafarer’s wife, Elena was used to spending time apart from her husband. But now Ali – whom she would speak to by phone or message almost daily – was no longer contactable, she felt truly alone. When she called the German crewing agency, Team Ship, desperate for answers, it was still unaware of the incident. A number she had for the company responsible for the crew and the ship, Iskenderun Ship Management, a Turkish operator, went unanswered. She waited for a call from some sort of official body, explaining what was going on, but none came.

Elena frantically tried to make contact with anyone who might know what had happened. After she posted on online chat groups for seafarers, she was messaged by the wife of a crew member who had not been among those taken by the police. Only after calling him was she able to piece together what was happening. Ali, along with Bekavac and eight other crew members, had been arrested on suspicion of drug smuggling.

Another week or so passed. Elena had another call with the crewing agency, which said lawyers would be provided by Iskenderun at no cost. “Don’t worry, they are in the police station, they are being questioned, then they will be released,” Elena recalls an agent telling her. “You just need to wait.” So she waited. But instead, the men were detained and charged. During those first days, Elena says, the crew had no legal representation.

When shipping incidents occur, a lawyer is usually appointed by a local P&I club “correspondent”, an independent adviser who can act on behalf of the shipowner and the club. When a lawyer was appointed, the crew said they were encouraged to accept the charges and sign what they described as arrest warrants, written in Turkish. “So we did,” one told Human Rights at Sea International, an NGO. “We were detained.” UK P&I, the club that provided insurance for the Phoenician M, said all appointments in this case, “including legal representation and the P&I correspondent”, were made by the shipowner, not them. They added that while they were not bound to do so, they provided support for the crew’s “significant” defence costs.

Days turned to weeks, then months. The men were moved from a local detention centre to a maximum security prison. Ali was one of many now isolated from their families, terrified about what would happen next. “Every day I was crying inside of that cell,” one Filipino crew member told me, adding that for a long time he didn’t know why he was being held. As for Elena, six months passed before she was finally able to speak with her husband. He put on a brave face, telling her he was OK, but asked her to send money: “If nobody sends you money in prison, you can’t buy food, you can’t buy anything.” Elena sent money and clothes, and waited for the men to stand trial. Another six months passed.

Finally, on 16 September 2024, following a number of hearings at Karadeniz Ereğli high criminal court, a verdict was due. Elena was sure Ali would be released. While he sat in the courtroom, she spent the day at home, anxiously awaiting the outcome. Then she received a brief message from the Finnish embassy. “I’m so sorry ... ” it said. While the eight other crew members had been acquitted, Ali and Bekavac had been found guilty on the basis of “command responsibility” and sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment. Elena was stunned. Eventually she replied, “What should I do now?”

Ali and Elena’s home is a one-bedroom flat in a modern housing estate not far from Helsinki’s airport. When I visit in September, Elena, true to her profession as a tour guide, has laid out a spread of local treats: pancakes, blueberry juice, grilled cheese with cloudberry jam. Ali’s suitcase, which she was able to retrieve after his sentence, is still slumped near the balcony door. She tries to remain optimistic for his return. Every week, she buys fresh flowers. On the wall above it she has pinned a banner: “Welcome Home”.

If the maritime industry is emblematic of the power of globalisation, Ali and Elena’s relationship is a story of what it means to live on its faultlines. Ali was born in Damascus, Syria. His mother raised him and his three siblings, together with his stepfather, who ran a shoe business. When Ali reached college age, his options for further education were limited – as were the countries he could travel to – so his family decided he should attend the maritime university in St Petersburg, Russia, which was the most affordable option. He graduated in 2011, just as Syria descended into civil war, meaning he could neither remain in Russia nor safely return home. He applied for asylum in Finland and was accepted, continuing his studies at the Novia University in Turku. In 2017, Ali was granted full citizenship.

Elena was born in Moscow. Her mother was a language teacher, her father an electrician. As she got older, she, too, was eager to build a life beyond her homeland and spent time as a student in Spain. She met Ali on a dating app in 2021. At the time, Elena, who had been working as a Spanish-language interpreter and tour guide in Russia, was hoping to continue her studies in Finland. If she managed to get accepted to a Finnish-language programme, the education would be free, and she was eager to practise with native speakers. When Ali struck up a conversation, she was intrigued by this Middle Eastern man who spoke her native Russian. He was at sea at the time, but they began speaking regularly over phone and video call. When Elena travelled to Finland to take her Finnish-language test, he met her at the airport. She passed her test and they married in January 2022. A month later, Russia invaded Ukraine.

They had all these plans, Elena says, but Ali struggled to find a job. For the past decade he had primarily worked on Russian ships; now Russia was at war and he struggled to find work with Finnish companies, which Elena believes was due to his Syrian heritage. Ali eventually secured a nine-month contract with a Russian shipping company, and Elena returned to Moscow to visit her mother. She was able to meet him briefly, when his ship stopped at Murmansk, but when Ali returned to Finland at the end of his contract, Elena became stranded in Russia for a further three months while she awaited the paperwork needed to leave. It was December 2022 when they finally reunited in Helsinki. For the first year of their marriage, they were like ships in the night.

It took months for Ali to secure his next contract: not just a job but a promotion, too. “I remember when he received the call,” Elena says. “He was so happy.” In May 2023 he was packing his bags, preparing to head to London to join the existing crew as they finished their rotation. The ship he was heading for was the Clipper Palma. In June, under the new management of Iskenderun, it was renamed: the Phoenician M.

Looking back, there were things about the job that seemed a bit off to Elena. Ali, who was appointed as the ship’s security officer, described the vessel as very old. He was also critical of the attitude of Iskenderun. When the crew made requests they would be unresponsive; some of these requests would prove critical to the case. When Bekavac noted Barranquilla was on the list of destinations, he requested additional security personnel, as well as cameras and locks for doors and hatches, due to the high risk of interference from drug cartels. Iskenderun did not respond. Elena says the lawyer appointed to Ali by Iskenderun visited him in prison rarely and did not seem to be prioritising his interests. “They were saying, ‘Don’t say a single word about the company … otherwise he will spend a long time there.’”

Since Ali was sentenced, Elena has been lobbying for his release while trying to keep her own life afloat. When he was arrested, she was still a relative newcomer to Finland, with no support network and no job, as she was still studying. Sanctions on Russia meant their credit cards did not work: “I was left without money, without help.” Elena was dismayed by the lack of support from the Finnish government. While its consular service has visited Ali in prison a number of times since late 2024, statements on the case have been scarce, and it is notably absent from Finnish media. One reason may be that Finland and Turkey have not had the easiest relations in recent years. Ankara put up resistance to Finland’s application to join Nato in 2022; since then it has made a growing number of extradition requests for political dissidents, which Finland has largely rejected.

For Elena, the apparent indifference to Ali’s plight has been underlined by Bekavac’s experience. The Croatian prime minister and foreign minister spoke out against the verdict, and his then wife, Katja, received support to arrange prison visits without delay. When Elena went to Ankara, she attended the Palace of Justice with her lawyer and without consular assistance. It took all day to navigate the bureaucracy of the building and, after submitting documents and photos, she had to wait a further two weeks before a prison visit was approved. Katja, Elena says, was able to meet the captain without a barrier between them,but when she finally made it through the prison gates, after the humiliation of a strip-­search, she had to speak with Ali through a glass pane. “Psychologically, it was very difficult,” she says.

During that first meeting, Elena was shocked by how much he had changed. “I have never seen my husband sad,” she says. “He’s always laughing, singing, dancing, but this time I didn’t recognise him. He was very thin, depressed and with grey hair.” The hardest thing was to contain her emotions: “When I’m alone here I can cry, I can tell my friends everything is very bad … but I can’t say such things to him. I have to support him.” She told him they had a new lawyer. That his mother was well. That they would be waiting for him. That they’d fight for him. After 40 minutes, their time was up.

As Elena continued to battle for diplomatic support, travelling to Turkey to visit Ali every month, she became aware the Croatian authorities were working behind the scenes. In August 2025, Ali watched from his cell as Bekavac was collected from the prison by a Croatian diplomat and flown home. In Croatia, there has been speculation that his release was negotiated as part of a prisoner swap with Mustafa Yiğit Zeren, a Turkish billionaire and close friend of President Erdoğan who was wanted by the Russians over alleged embezzlement of €600m. When Elena heard the news she felt hopeful for Ali, but soon this turned to dismay. “I was absolutely sure that after that Finland would change their attitude … but nothing. Every time they say, ‘We don’t know what happened, we do not know why the captain was released.’” It was as if her husband did not exist.

When I spoke to Jussi Tanner, Finland’s director general for consular services, he told me he cannot comment on the details of the case but described it as “concerning and troubling”. Finland, he says, continues to engage with the Turkish authorities and, particularly since Bekavac’s release, has been seeking clarification regarding Ali’s prolonged detention. “Everything I know about the case seems to indicate that it makes no sense that he’s still in custody,” Tanner says.

Elena says she spends all her spare time investigating the case herself, poring over the details as she grows increasingly suspicious of the motivations of all the parties involved. She pulls out a black folder of documents relating to Ali’s employment records. She also shows me her diary, a white book with a gold heart on the cover filled with neat handwriting. Its pages are full of memories, but from October 2023 they are blank.

As the case of Phoenician M has lingered on, it has drawn attention to the protections afforded to seafarers and the need for these to be reaffirmed. There are numerous international agreements designed to protect their rights, such as the International Labour Organisation Guidelines on Fair Treatment of Seafarers and the Maritime Labour Convention – often described as the “seafarers’ bill of rights” – but in practice they are at the beck and call of whichever jurisdiction they happen to sail into. “It’s aspirational, but not very concrete,” is how James Turner KC, who specialises in shipping law, summarises it to me.

Maritime organisations have also expressed growing concern at the extent to which supply chains are being exploited by organised crime. In 2019, MSC, the world’s largest ocean carrier, came under intense scrutiny after 20 tonnes of cocaine with a value of $1bn was discovered by US authorities on the MSC Gayane at Philadelphia. Large cocaine shipments were also found on three other MSC ships that year. An investigation by Bloomberg alleged the company had been infiltrated by members of a Balkan cartel. Eight Gayane crew members pleaded guilty of involvement in the drug-smuggling operation.

Criminal actors clearly do exist in the industry, but innocent seafarers are also being caught in the net. Keith Svendsen, an executive at Danish group Maersk, told the Financial Times shipping companies were now dealing with “some of the most dangerous people in the world” and cited crew members coerced into helping smuggling gangs. Fabrizio Barcellona, a coordinator at the ITF, says the issue is not with countries taking a strong stance against drug trafficking, but that seafarers are being scapegoated. “It’s not good enough just to put them in jail without clear evidence,” he says.

Over the past decade, Turkey has become a significant hub for the importation of cocaine to Europe, and there is growing pressure to address the issue. Erdoğan’s government has been accused of allowing organised crime to proliferate, and high-ranking political figures have been accused of involvement in drug trafficking. Imdat Öner, a former Turkish diplomat turned public policy analyst, told me that instead of effectively pursuing organised crime networks, the authorities are focusing on low-volume trafficking of the sort found on the Phoenician M. “It allows the government, the police, to save face internationally,” he says.

David Hammond, a former military seafarer, qualified barrister and founder of Human Rights at Sea International, has published a review of Ali’s case which calls it a “grave miscarriage of justice” and questions the prosecution’s integrity and motivations. Court papers state that the investigation was triggered by intelligence from Kayseri province police narcotics department, and the conviction based on evidence gathered following the seizure. But according to Hammond, Turkish police failed to request documentation relating to the Colombian incident, key witnesses were not interviewed, and no forensic evidence linking crew members to the drugs was presented. It is unclear why, of 20 crew onboard, only 10 were arrested. The prosecution seems to have rested solely on the rank and responsibilities of the crew. The conviction, as Ali’s lawyer argued, “rests on speculation rather than proof”.

There appears to be some awareness of these weaknesses within the Turkish judiciary. In April 2025, the chief public prosecutor referred the case to the supreme court of appeal, which in March 2026 upheld Ali’s conviction by a 3-2 majority. However, the opinions of the two dissenting judges pointed to many of the issues raised by Ali’s defence. They agreed the investigation was incomplete, there was not proper communication with the Colombian authorities, and police did not pursue an investigation in regard to the source intelligence that led them to the drugs on the ship in the first place. In July, Ali and Bekavac (who remains convicted as far as Turkish law is concerned) had their sentences increased to 33 years, due to a failure to pay a £3,000 fine that was part of their original sentence.

Bekavac may now be at home with his family, but he remains incensed about the case and is outraged at the suggestion that he could have been involved in a drug-smuggling operation. He told me he was made aware of the destination list for the Phoenician M only three days before it arrived in Barranquilla and the responsibility for loading cargo fell on the stevedores working at the port. The cocaine reportedly found in Turkey was buried 5 metres deep within the coal, he adds, so could only have been concealed while the ship was being loaded in Barranquilla, not during the journey, as alleged by the prosecution. Bekavac, like the other crew, believed that, having been cleared by the Colombian harbourmaster, they would have no further issues.

The captain also told me he documented his email correspondence relating to the incident on a USB drive. This was confiscated by Turkish police and not presented as evidence in the case. When it was returned to him, the drive had been wiped (he was later able to recover the data). In an interview with Slobodna Dalmacija, a Croatian newspaper, Bekavac said the lawyer provided to him by the company told him not to mention the stamps on the packages or talk about the company.

As Hammond sees it, there is evidence that gestures to serious organised crime – as well as the possible knowledge of state authorities – yet Turkish police appear not to have pursued lines of inquiry that might shed light on this. The cargo’s recipient, for example, does not seem to have been scrutinised, nor were any representatives from Iskenderun called as witnesses. If the crew can be held liable due to “command responsibility”, then the shipping company should, at the very least, have to answer as to whether it did all it could to address the risk of drug trafficking on its vessel.

Hammond believes the case should be a wake-up call for everyone who has a moral duty to the welfare of seafarers – from P&I clubs to shipping companies to unions – and is appalled that a sector responsible for trillions of dollars of trade cannot guarantee the protection of its workers. Seafarers, he tells me, are simply treated as “disposable assets”.

Iskenderun did not respond to requests for comment. However, the company appears to now be operating as Phoenician Shipping & Crewing, which has the same office address and is listed as the owner of the Phoenician M. Emails to Phoenician Shipping bounced, and the telephone number dialled to Orontes Shipping, another Turkish company established in 2024, which also lists the ship in its fleet. Emails and calls to this company also went unanswered. The Turkish Ministry of Justice did not respond to requests for comment.

In January, Elena returned to Ankara to visit Ali. He always has presents for her, she says, holding up an intricately beaded cushion by way of illustration, but this time he told her there was a box waiting for her to take home. “The guards will give it to you,” he said. When she left, she collected it. Inside were two budgerigars. One boy, one girl. “A couple.”

Ali has always loved birds, Elena says. There were budgies and parrots in the prison, and Ali began breeding them. Dozens of his fellow prisoners have a bird now and Ali wanted her to have some, too. Transferring them to Finland was not straightforward, though compared with the other challenges in her life, it was, at least, achievable. Panjo and Lucy now live in a cage above the kitchen counter, chirping loudly. Elena opens the cage and they flutter around the room before landing happily on her outstretched finger. Along with the cat, Koko, they join the list of those waiting for Ali to return home.

Ali’s lawyer has petitioned the chief public prosecutor – who appears to believe there are questions over Ali’s conviction – to file an objection to the supreme court of appeal’s decision, which would prompt a further review of the case. While Elena awaited further news, she was distraught to receive a call from Ali telling her he was being moved to a unit for prisoners whose convictions are considered final. Then, in August, the prosecutor agreed to submit the objection to the court.

No date for a decision has been set, so again Elena waits. She says Ali is coming under intense pressure from the Turkish authorities to accept a transfer to Finland, but to do so could disrupt attempts to overturn his conviction – and risk him remaining in prison on his return. For now, both their lives remain suspended. Elena takes care of the cat and birds, and continues to make a living as a guide in Helsinki. She avoids talking too much about herself to holidaymakers. To do so would probably tarnish the theme of the tour: “The happiest country in the world.”