Turkish Captain Vehbi Kara returned home last week after being trapped in the port of Adabiya, Suez for more than a year. He is the latest seafarer affected by Egypt’s peculiar legal guardianship system.
Most of Captain Kara’s long year in Egypt was aboard his ship, the Panama-registered Kenan Mete, which was abandoned in June 2020 when the vessel’s owners, Blodwen Marina, refused to pay the crew. Egyptian authorities then seized the ship with a view to selling it to cover its debts, including the crew’s pay.
But an Egyptian court determined that someone - Captain Kara specifically - must become the ship’s legal guardian.
This is similar to the fate of navigational officer Mohammad Aisha who was made legal guardian of the Aman for four years.
Captain Kara was blocked from leaving the vessel by his new legal status. The court’s decision required him to stay onboard without any pay, with no end-date given, or any plans made to relieve him if the ship’s sale dragged on.
The crew’s plight onboard the abandoned Kenan Mete grew from days to weeks to months. But fortunately the ship’s P&I Club, the insurer, provided the seafarers with food, water, and other basic amenities.
It was thanks to intervention by the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) that most of the crew were released and repatriated between October 2020 and January 2021, along with four months’ pay.
It was also thanks to the ITF that Captain Kara was moved from being alone on the ship to a nearby hotel, when the ship’s power failed in March this year. He was however prohibited from leaving the hotel.
This latest event has led the ITF to call on Egypt to take a closer look at how it deals with abandoned vessels and the seafarers onboard, especially coming so soon after Mohammad Aisha’s abandonment experience in the Suez received worldwide attention.
