An Iranian oil tanker detained in Gibraltar for breaching European Union sanctions could be allowed to leave, although a last minute US legal bid to halt it could yet end up back in court, the territory's first minister said.
Gibraltar decided on Thursday to free the tanker, but did not immediately indicate when or if the ship would set sail after the United States launched a last-minute legal bid to hold it.
"She is able to leave as soon as she organises the logistics necessary in order to sail a ship of that size wherever it's going next," Fabian Picardo told BBC Radio. "Could be today, could be tomorrow."
Asked about the US request, he said: "Those will be determinations made purely objectively and independently by those authorities and then subject to once again the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Gibraltar. It could go back to the court absolutely."
The Grace 1 was seized by British Royal Marine commandos off the coast of Britain's Mediterranean territory Gibraltar at the western mouth of the Mediterranean on July 4 on suspicion of violating European Union sanctions by taking oil to Syria, a close ally of Iran.
Two weeks later, Iran seized a British-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz leading into the Gulf.
The two tankers became pawns in the standoff between Iran and the West, their fate tangled up in the diplomatic differences between the EU's big powers and the United States.
Iran said the ship would sail shortly and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif characterised the US bid to prevent it from leaving as "piracy".
Australian Associated Press
