Oslo [Norway], February 1: According to Reuters, Norwegian police have detained a Norwegian ship at the request of Latvia on suspicion of damaging a fiber optic cable in the Baltic Sea connecting Latvia and Sweden.
The ship, owned and flagged by Norway and named Silver Dania but crewed by Russians, was traveling from St. Petersburg (Russia) in the Baltic Sea to Murmansk (Russia) in the Arctic when it was seized on the evening of January 30 off the coast of Tromso, northern Norway.
"The ship is suspected of causing serious damage to a fiber-optic cable in the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Sweden. Police are on board the ship to search, question and collect clues," Norwegian police said, adding that the crew and ship owner were cooperating with the police.
On January 26, Sweden and Latvia announced that a fiber optic cable owned by Latvian state-owned Radio and Television (LVRTC) connecting the city of Ventspils (Latvia) and the island of Gotland (Sweden) was damaged.
AFP quoted the ship's owner as saying that "the ship did nothing wrong". "We were sailing near Gotland but we did not drop anchor. We did nothing wrong. The Norwegian authorities took us into port to clarify everything," Tormod Fossmark, owner of the Silver Sea shipping company, which owns the Silver Dania, told AFP.
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper
