A Norwegian-owned and Russian-crewed ship that authorities suspect may have been involved in damage to an underwater fibre optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland has been stopped off Norway, police said.
The Silver Dania was stopped on Thursday evening and brought into the port of Tromso in northern Norway on Friday morning by a Norwegian coast guard vessel for inspection, Norwegian police said in a statement.
They said that followed a request from Latvian authorities and a ruling by a Norwegian court.
The Norwegian-owned ship Silver Dania in the port of Tromso, Norway (Rune Stoltz Bertinussen/NTB via AP)
Police said there is suspicion that the ship, which was sailing between the Russian ports of St Petersburg and Murmansk when it was detained, had been involved earlier in serious cable damage that was discovered last weekend in the Baltic Sea.
The authorities did not elaborate, but said they were searching the ship and conducting interviews.
Tormod Fossmark, chief executive of the SilverSea company that owns the ship, denied that the vessel caused any damage when it had sailed through the area of the cable, and said that the company was co-operating with authorities on what it considered a “serious” matter.
“We have no involvement in this whatsoever,” Mr Fossmark told The Associated Press.
“We did not have any anchors out or do anything, so that will be confirmed today” in the investigation, he said.
He stressed that the ship’s tracking data shows no irregularities in its journey.
Mr Fossmark said he hoped the vessel, which was not yet carrying any cargo on Friday, would be able to sail onward later in the day.
Damage to the data transmission cable running from Ventspils, Latvia, to Gotland was detected on Sunday.
Later that day, Swedish prosecutors announced that they had opened a preliminary investigation into suspected sabotage and ordered the detention of a vessel suspected of damaging the cable, the Malta-flagged Vezhen.
That ship’s Bulgarian owner said it was possible that the Vezhen had accidentally caused a cable to break, but dismissed any possibility of sabotage or any other action on the part of the crew.