Man Plucked From Sea Keeps Police Guessing

Swedish officials were yesterday trying to establish the identity of a man found drifting in international waters between Denmark and Norway on a flimsy wooden raft. He was found on Friday by a Norwegian oil tanker in the Skagerrak strait.

The man, who speaks faultless English, identified himself as George Williams and claimed he had been dumped in open waters days earlier by a British ship. He was, he said, a "stateless American" but would not say why he was thrown off a ship, Swedish officials said, and hid his face from the media when he was taken to a port in southern Sweden.

"If he was thrown off a ship, they must have thrown off the raft for him to sit on as well, so I don't know," a Swedish marine police spokesman, Bengt Albinsson, told AP.

The man's raft was made from planks and four oil barrels bound together, his rescuers said. He carried no identification. He was born in South Africa in 1959 but had spent a "long time in the USA", a police spokesman told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. "He has worked in Europe, but does not want to say where and with what. He is not seeking asylum in Sweden but wants to go to New York," he added.

The man was taken to hospital with dehydration and a frostbitten foot, but did not seem seriously injured, authorities said. He will be held in police custody until today, when authorities will contact the US embassy to try to confirm his identity.

Last night Nils Sunde of Norway's rescue coordination centre said it was highly unlikely that the man would have been dumped overboard by a British ship in the busy channel or that he had survived on the open seas for several days. "It's been cold recently. The temperatures in the day have been 10C (50F) with just 5C at night ... the man appears to have claimed he was at sea for four or five days. But in those conditions two days would be a long time. I doubt his story. But it could be true."