The 62-day saga of mercy mission ship MV Captain Ali came to an end as the cargo on board the ship was shifted to another ship, Cape Colorado, which set sail to Colombo from here on Tuesday.
"MV Ali, which set sail to Kolkata on Sunday, has been sold. The cargo was transferred to another European vessel, Cape Colorado, which will arrive in Colombo on Wednesday night,” said Agni Subramaniam of Manitham, a Chennai-based human rights organisation that took up the case of MV Ali.
MV Ali had brought 884 tonnes of relief material, including medicines, collected from all over Europe, for Sri Lankan Tamils. It set sail from the UK in April and was escorted out of Sri Lankan waters by the Lankan navy on June 9 when it tried to enter the Colombo port. The ship was anchored in the international waters near the Chennai port for a few days.
Last Thursday it was allowed to dock at Chennai port after which the cargo was transferred to 27 containers and loaded into Cape Colorado on Friday. The two passengers in the ship, Kristjan Gu?mundsson of Iceland and Uthayanan Thavarajasingam of the UK, who were stranded after immigration officials here initially refused to give them transit visas to enable them to take flights to their home countries were granted transit visas on Sunday.
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