COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -The cargo ship Vezhen did damage a subsea cable linking Sweden and Latvia last month but it was an accident, not sabotage, a Swedish prosecutor said on Monday, adding that the Maltese-flagged vessel had been released.
The incident took place on Jan. 26 and was one of several in recent months, triggered a hunt for vessels suspected of involvement.
The Silver Dania, a Norwegian cargo ship with an all-Russian crew, was seized by authorities in Norway at the request of the request of the Latvians before being cleared of wrongdoing and released.
Swedish police seized and boarded the Vezhen the day after the cable was damaged in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone.
“The investigation now clearly shows that it is not a case of sabotage,” the Swedish prosecution authority said in a statement.
Investigators had, however, concluded that the Vezhen did cause the damage and their investigation is continuing to examine whether other crimes were committed, the authority said.
“It has been established that a combination of weather conditions and deficiencies in equipment and seamanship contributed to the cable break,” it said.
The Baltic Sea region is on high alert after a string of power cable, telecom link, and gas pipeline outages since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
In response, NATO last month said it would deploy frigates, aircraft and naval drones to help protect critical infrastructure in the region and that it reserved the right to take action against ships suspected of posing a threat.
(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen; editing by Louise Breusch Rasmussen, Terje Solsvik and Jason Neely)
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