Swedish court orders detention of Russian captain of tanker boarded off Sweden
STOCKHOLM — A Swedish court ordered Sunday to arrest the Russian captain of a ship suspected of sailing under a false flag in the Baltic Sea and was boarded by authorities last week.
The commander of Sea Owl 1, whose name was not released, was arrested on Friday, the day after the Swedish coast guard boarded the ship off Trelleborg on Sweden’s southern coast.
Prosecutors suspect he used forged documents. They said on Sunday that the Ystad district court decided to keep him in custody in line with their requests, Swedish news agency TT reported.
The tanker was sailing under the flag of Comoros, an island nation off the coast of East Africa. However, the coast guard said it suspected that it was not included in the ship’s registry and therefore there was no flag state to guarantee safety on the ship.
The tanker was also on the EU sanctions list and was traveling from Brazil to Russia, according to the coast guard. Although its cargo was not visible on Thursday, it had previously been used to transport oil between these two countries.
This is the second ship sailing in Swedish territorial waters to come under coast guard investigation in a week on suspicion of using a false flag. The cargo ship “Caffa”, whose crew is mostly Russian, is on Ukraine’s sanctions list and is accused of carrying stolen grain. Its captain was also detained on suspicion of using forged documents.
Sweden said it would do this last year Speed up insurance checks Sanctions have been imposed on foreign ships in a move aimed at tightening controls on Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” of aging ships used to transport oil and gas or transport stolen Ukrainian grain.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to the text.
