Most of the crew from a cargo ship that went missing three weeks ago were brought to Moscow on Thursday for further questioning by Russian investigators, as were the eight men suspected of hijacking it, Russian officials said. The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that 11 of the 15 crew members from the ship, Arctic Sea, would continue to be questioned over the still murky details of its disappearance. The other four, including the captain, would remain on board the Arctic Sea in the Atlantic until it was given permission to return to its Finnish owner. Meanwhile, Russian television showed images of the suspected hijackers being rushed by uniformed soldiers from the back ramp of a Russian Il-76 transport plane at the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow. The men--four Estonians, two Latvians and two Russians -- were captured Monday when a Russian antisubmarine ship intercepted the Arctic Sea 300 miles off of Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean, according to the official Russian account. Other than their nationalities, little is known about the suspects, and it is still unclear how they supposedly commandeered the ship on July 24 not far from the Swedish coast, piloting it some 2,000 miles through closely-monitored European waters out into the open Atlantic. An unidentified member of the Arctic Sea's crew, shown on Russia's Vesti television, said that the ship was able to send a distress call via text message as the hijackers boarded, but that the captain was forced to retract it. 'With a gun pointed at him, what was the captain supposed to say?' the crew member said. 'He said that we were joking.' The ship's captain had radioed the authorities that day, saying that the intruders left after 12 hours and that he would continue course to Algeria. The alarm was raised after the Arctic Sea failed to arrive on Aug. 4. Russian officials have still not explained why the men had sought to commandeer the Arctic Sea, with its relatively cheap cargo of lumber. The director of the Russian firm that insured the ship told NTV television on Thursday that his company had received a ransom demand of $1.5 million in early August. Finnish police have confirmed the report, but they could not say who made the demand. The Investigative Committee of the Russian prosecutor general's office said Thursday that crew members had confirmed details about the hijacking that were reported earlier. 'During interrogations, members of the crew explained that eight men in black clothing with 'policia' written on their backs, had approached the Arctic Sea in an inflatable speedboat,' Vladimir I. Markin, a spokesman for the committee, told reporters. 'The men came aboard and, threatening the crew with weapons, demanded that they follow all orders unquestioningly.' 