Norwegian authorities said late on Friday they have found no evidence to suggest that a vessel they were detaining in Tromso earlier in the day had anything to do with a suspected cable sabotage in the Baltic Sea.
TradeWinds already reported about the 5,353-dwt fish carrier Silver Daniel (built 1989) being held in the Norwegian port.
Norway acted upon a request by Latvian authorities, which had suspected the Silver Daniel of involvement in the sabotage last week of a fibre-optic cable linking Latvia with Sweden.
A few hours later, Tromso police issued a statement that the vessel was free to leave.
“No findings have been made linking the ship to the act,” said Ronny Jorgensen, a police attorney in Tromso police district.
Both the Silver Daniel’s owner and crew cooperated with the investigation and went to the Arctic port voluntarily.
Shipowner Tormod Fossmark said earlier on Friday that he had been in touch with Norwegian authorities for days prior to the detention.
The Norwegian-owned and Norwegian-flagged Silver Daniel was investigated due to its location at the time of the Baltic cable break. The ship probably came under extra scrutiny because of its Russian crew.
Several government and security officials from Baltic and Western states suspect Kremlin involvement in four cable and pipeline incidents in the region over the past 15 months, allegedly caused by ships departing from Russia.
The government in Moscow has denied all sabotage claims and accuses the Baltic states of using the incidents as a pretext to increase Nato’s naval presence in the area and obstruct Russia’s trade.
Swedish authorities had already detained another ship in connection with the same incident for which the Silver Daniel was briefly held — the 32,200-dwt bulker Vezhen (built 2022).
The Vezhen’s Bulgarian owner Navibulgar admitted that the ship’s malfunctioning anchor may indeed have cut a cable but dismissed any notion that this happened on purpose.
Finland separately arrested the 74,000-dwt tanker Eagle S (built 2006) as part of its investigation into a cable break between Estonia and Finland on 25 December.(Copyright)
