The captain of an oil tanker and two officers accused of severing five undersea power and telecoms cables in the Baltic Sea last December, blamed technical faults for the damage as their
The captain of an oil tanker and two officers accused of severing five undersea power and telecoms cables in the Baltic Sea last December, blamed technical faults for the damage as their trial began in Helsinki on Monday.
NATO allies with forces stationed around the Baltic Sea went on high alert after the December 25 incident, one of a string of suspicious cable and gas pipeline outages in the region since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Prosecutors say the Eagle S tanker deliberately dragged its 11,000 kg (24,250 lb) anchor along the seabed to sever the Estlink 2 power cable linking Finland and Estonia and four internet cables as the vessel sailed from a Russian port via the Gulf of Finland.
Finnish security forces intercepted the Cook Islands-registered ship and boarded it from helicopters after ordering it to move into Finnish territorial waters.
The tanker's Georgian captain, Davit Vadatchkoria, and its Georgian first and Indian second officers pleaded not guilty, saying the vessel's anchor had dropped due to technical faults in the securing of the anchor winch.
State prosecutor Heidi Nummela said that, while investigators did not find proof that the anchor's fastening had been manipulated, the failure of
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