The Norwegian ship Silver Dania, whose entire crew is Russian, has been detained at the request of Latvia on suspicion of sabotaging a fiber-optic cable in the Baltic Sea, Norwegian police said.
"There is suspicion that the ship caused serious damage to a fiber-optic cable in the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Sweden," a Norwegian police statement said.
The statement added that police are on board the ship to search, question and gather information. The crew of the Silver Dania and the shipping company Silver Sea are cooperating with Norwegian authorities in the investigation.
Norway brought the Silver Dania into the port of Tromso after receiving a request from Latvia. The ship was traveling between the seaports of St. Petersburg and Murmansk in northwestern Russia.
"We were sailing near the Swedish island of Gotland but did not drop anchor. We did nothing wrong," Tormod Fossmark, owner of the Silver Sea shipping company, told AFP.
The Latvian State Radio and Television Center (LVRTC) reported that on January 26, the submarine fiber optic cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged by external impact. The data transmission monitoring system detected a disruption on the Ventspils - Gotland section. LVRTC informed the Latvian Navy about the incident.
On January 27, Sweden intercepted another ship, the Bulgarian-owned Vezhen, on suspicion of damaging a communications cable between Sweden and Latvia in the Baltic Sea. After the Malta-flagged ship was detained, Aleksandar Kalchev, CEO of the state-owned Bulgarian Marine Fleet, denied that the cable was deliberately severed.
