A Helsinki court yesterday dismissed a case against three members of a ship from Russia’s “shadow fleet” suspected of cutting Baltic Sea cables, saying it was beyond its jurisdiction.
The captain and two officers of the Cook Islands-registered oil tanker Eagle S were accused of dragging the anchor on the seabed for about 90km, damaging five undersea cables in the Gulf of Finland on Dec. 25 last year.
The EstLink 2 power cable and four telecommunications cables connecting Finland and Estonia were damaged in the incident.
Photo: Reuters
Many experts and political leaders have viewed the suspected sabotage as part of a “hybrid war” carried out by Russia against Western countries.
The Helsinki District Court said it was “dismissing the charge in the case involving the tanker Eagle S along with the claims for damages... as it was not possible to apply Finnish criminal law.”
Prosecutors said captain Davit Vadatchkoria and senior officers Robert Egizaryan and Santosh Kumar Chaurasia had neglected their duties intentionally after leaving the Russian Port of Ust-Luga.
The three were charged with “aggravated criminal mischief and aggravated interference with communications.”
Prosecutors called for unconditional prison sentences of at least two-and-a-half years, saying that the trio “neglected to investigate the reason for the drop in speed and engine revolutions, even though it was clear that they were caused by an external force that was affecting the ship.”
The defendants denied the charges, saying that the cables were severed accidentally, and that the ship slowed down due to engine problems and rough weather conditions.
The defense said that Finland lacked jurisdiction, because the cable cuts happened outside Finnish territorial waters.
The prosecution said it did, due to the risk posed to Finland’s critical infrastructure.
The court ruled the incident did not result “in the kinds of consequences to Finland’s energy supply or telecommunications that are required to satisfy the statutory definion of criminal mischief or aggravated criminal mischief.”
“The anchor loss was due to a failure of the anchor securing mechanism” and “should be classified as an incident of navigation within the meaning of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea,” it said.
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