My observations:
1. You haven't understood this part of the article regarding false flagging:
"The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea permits a warship to visit a cargo ship to verify its flag where there are reasonable grounds to suspect the vessel is without nationality. The British Defence Ministry, in its statement after the seizure of the Smyrtos, said that if a vessel is determined to be stateless, the UK can exercise criminal and maritime enforcement powers under its domestic Policing and Crime Act.
The Smyrtos, like many ships that are accused of belonging to Russia’s “shadow fleet”, has frequently changed its flag. The ship had once previously been registered in The Gambia, and then adopted a Cameroon flag in December 2025. When it departed from a Russian port, it had a Cameroonian flag, but Lloyd’s List Intelligence reported that the ship had been removed from Cameroon’s register earlier, in June. It is owned by a Chinese company."
Once false flagging is determined, as appears to be the case here, the shipmaster can become liable to other criminal charges.
2. This article's author (Ruchi Kumar) has actually sympathised, quite blatantly, with her countryman here. Instead of reporting the facts objectively, she is effectively appealing on behalf of the captive, though I don't know whom she is appealing to - does Modi read AJ? (N.B. You did ask me for citations of Al-Jazeera bias just the other day. Feel free to add this to your list.)
3. The article's author (Ruchi Kumar) and/or her editor are effing illiterates. It is shocking that in this era of AI assisted spell check, someone has - more than once in the same article - declared this mariner to have "commandeered" other vessels in the past when they clearly meant "commanded".
Isn't English still an official language in your nation, or have the northies finally defeated the southies and formally imposed the sacred Vedic tongues upon you all?
