By Elviira Luoma
HELSINKI (Reuters) -A Finnish district court is expected to deliver its verdict on Friday in the criminal trial of the captain and the first and second officers of the Eagle S oil tanker, accused of severing five undersea power and telecoms cables in the Baltic Sea last year.
The trial is among the first judicial attempts to punish suspected perpetrators for damaging critical underwater infrastructure, but the matter is complicated by provisions of international maritime law and the difficulty of proving criminal intent. The three deny the charges.
NATO forces in the region went on high alert following the December 25 incident, one of a string of cable and gas pipeline outages in the Baltic Sea since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
DEFENDANTS BLAMED TECHNICAL FAULT
The ship, carrying Russian oil, dragged its 11,000 kg (24,250 lb) anchor for 90 km (56 miles) across the Gulf of Finland seabed, breaking the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 power cable and four internet lines, prosecutors said.
Finnish prosecutors charged the Cook Islands-registered tanker’s Georgian captain, as well as the Georgian first officer and the Indian second officer, with aggravated criminal mischief and aggravated interference with telecommunications.
The charges rest on allegations of gross negligence on the part of the crew regarding the poor condition of the vessel’s anchor winch, rather than firm evidence that the anchor was intentionally dropped to cause damage, court documents showed.
The defendants pleaded not guilty at trial, stating that the vessel’s anchor had dropped unnoticed due to technical faults in the winch that was supposed to hold it in place.
They also rejected the cable owners’ claims for tens of millions of euros in damages.
The prosecutor asked the court to sentence the defendants to prison for a minimum of two-and-a-half years each.
The defendants also argued that Finland lacked jurisdiction in the case as the cables were damaged in international waters, an argument the court said it would consider in reaching its decision.
The court lifted the defendants’ travel bans at the end of the trial in September and they have since left Finland.
No charges were brought against the ship’s owner, and the vessel was released from Finnish custody in March.
(Reporting by Elviira Luoma and Anne Kauranen, editing by Essi Lehto, Terje Solsvik and Alex Richardson)
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