Finland jails Russian cargo ship captain over Baltic Sea cable sabotage

A Finnish court on Thursday jailed the Russian captain and an Azerbaijani crew member of the cargo ship Fitburg for aggravated sabotage over damage to two subsea ‌telecommunications cables in the Gulf of Finland last year.

Finland on December 31 seized the vessel in the Gulf of Finland while it was en route from Russia to Israel, on suspicion that it had damaged cables running from Helsinki to Estonia.

The Helsinki District Court sentenced the captain to three years and six ⁠months in prison and the crew member to two years and 10 months.

It ‌said in a statement the two acted intentionally when the ship dragged an anchor chain and anchor shank along the seabed for ‌around 130km (81 miles). The freighter sailed across nine telecommunications and power cables, as well as a gas pipeline.

The indictment did not allege that the captain had explicitly ordered the anchor to be lowered, but the court found that both defendants must have known it was dragging.

Finland has intensified efforts to protect its undersea infrastructure ⁠following a string ⁠of incidents affecting cables and pipelines in the Baltic Sea since 2022, including a vessel-boarding drill it conducted ‌in September.

The captain will appeal the verdict, while the crew member has not yet decided whether to do ‌so, ‌according to their respective lawyers.

The court also ordered the two defendants to jointly pay around €1.9 ‌million (US$2.1 million) in damages, and ordered the captain to pay about €85,000 more, the verdict ⁠showed.

The seized vessel, sailing under Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ flag, was en route ⁠from the Russian port of St Petersburg to Israel at the time of the incident. The ship has since been released.

The defendants, who have remained ‌in Finland subject to travel ‌bans, have denied any wrongdoing and have challenged Finland’s jurisdiction in the case.

The 14 crew members of the vessel were nationals of Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, investigators have said.

In a similar case last year, the Helsinki district court ruled that Finnish jurisdiction did not apply in an incident involving three crew members from a Cook Islands-registered tanker, the Eagle S.

The Helsinki Court of Appeal overturned that ruling and sent the case back to the district court.

In the case of the Fitburg, the court found it could be heard in the country, noting that it “concerned intentional offences whose consequences had manifested in Finland”.