Finnish police and coast guard officers boarded the Cook dinner Islands-registered Eagle S on Thursday [Dec. 26] and introduced it to a location close to a Finnish port the place crew members are being questioned.
Baltic Sea nations have been on excessive alert after a string of outages of energy cables, telecom hyperlinks and fuel pipelines since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. NATO stated on Friday it could increase its presence within the area.
Finland Finds Anchor Drag Marks Left by Tanker That Broke Cables
Investigators stated they believed the Eagle S on Dec. 25 broke the Estlink 2 undersea energy cable linking Finland and Estonia, and severed or broken 4 fiber optic strains by dragging its anchor throughout the seabed for dozens of kilometers.
Finland’s president final week stated he believed additional injury would have occurred on the seabed had the ship not been stopped.
Finland’s customs service has stated it believes the Eagle S is a part of a shadow fleet of growing older tankers getting used to evade sanctions on the sale of Russian oil, and has formally impounded its cargo though it’s nonetheless on board the ship.
The proprietor of the Eagle S, United Arab Emirates-based Caravella LLC FZ, filed a request with the Helsinki District Court docket on Monday to cancel the seizure of the ship.
Finnish lawyer Herman Ljungberg, who filed the paperwork on behalf of the corporate, stated authorities had not supplied any rationalization of the authorized foundation for taking the vessel into custody and boarding it.
“The Finns have hijacked a vessel,” Ljungberg informed Reuters.
He stated the crew had been interrogated by investigators with none authorized help and that they’d been disadvantaged of sleep.
A police spokesperson stated the seizure of the vessel had taken place in line with Finnish regulation and that crew members had been knowledgeable of their rights, together with that of authorized help.
That they had not been disadvantaged of sleep, the spokesperson added.
(Reporting by Essi Lehto in Helsinki, Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen and Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, writing by Terje Solsvik, enhancing by Andrew Heavens)
{Photograph}: Finnish Coast Guard stopped a small boat which tried to succeed in the Cook dinner Islands-registered oil tanker Eagle S anchored close to the Kilpilahti port in Porvoo, on the Gulf of Finland, Monday, Dec. 30, 2024. (Jussi Nukari/Lehtikuva by way of AP)
