Finnish Court Jails Fitburg Captain Over Cable Damage
A Finnish court has sent two crew members of the cargo ship Fitburg to prison for deliberately damaging undersea telecom cables. The ruling comes after years of incidents involving cables and pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
Who was sentenced and for how long
The Helsinki District Court ruled on Thursday. It found the Russian captain and an Azerbaijani crew member guilty of aggravated sabotage.
The captain received 3 years and 6 months. The crew member received 2 years and 10 months.
The anchor and the two cables
Two telecommunications cables in the Gulf of Finland were damaged last year. The court said the two men acted intentionally. Its statement says the anchor chain and shank scraped the seabed over about 130 km (81 miles).
Finland seized the vessel on 31 December. It was heading from the Russian port of St Petersburg to Israel and sailing under the flag of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Authorities suspected it had damaged cables running from Helsinki to Estonia. The ship has since been released.
Damages and the road to appeal
Both defendants must jointly pay about €1.9 million ($2.1 million) in damages, the verdict showed. The captain owes roughly €85,000 on top of that.
The verdict is not final. The captain's lawyer says he will appeal. The lawyer for the crew member says his client has not yet decided.
Both men deny any wrongdoing and dispute Finland's jurisdiction. They have remained in the country under travel bans. Investigators have said the vessel carried 14 crew members, who were nationals of Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
A wider pattern in the Baltic
Finland has stepped up work to protect undersea infrastructure after a series of cable and pipeline incidents in the Baltic Sea, which began in 2022. Finland also held a vessel-boarding drill in September.
Source: gCaptain