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The
Stena Impero sailed out of Iranian waters on Friday, having been
seized by Iran's Revolutionary Guards on July 19 shortly after
British forces detained an Iranian tanker off the territory of
Gibraltar. The Iranian ship was released in August.
"Finally approaching berth in Dubai right now," Erik Hanell, the
chief executive of Sweden's Stena Bulk, which owns the ship,
told Reuters in Stockholm in a text message.
Stena Bulk said the crew would receive medical checks and would
be de-briefed in Dubai, which lies across the Gulf from Iran,
before traveling home to their families. Seven of the 23 crew
were freed earlier this month.
The crew who were still on the vessel came from India, Russia
and the Philippines, a Stena Bulk spokesman said before the ship
had docked.
"The crew are in high spirits, understandably. They will be
checked by medical professionals once ashore, but the captain
has informed us all are in good health," he said.
The seizure of the vessel, which the Iranian authorities said
was for marine violations, followed attacks on other merchant
tankers in Gulf waters in May and June. The United States blamed
those attacks on Iran, which Tehran denied.
Relations between Iran and the United States and its allies have
deteriorated since Washington withdrew last year from a global
agreement to rein in Tehran's nuclear work and imposed sanctions
aimed at shutting down Iranian oil exports.
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom in Stockholm and Christopher Pike
in Dubai; Writing by Sylvia Westall and Edmund Blair; Editing by
John Stonestreet)
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