Finland court jails captain and crew member over Baltic cable sabotage

The Fitburg was en route to Israel when it was seized by Finnish authorities in the Baltic Sea for alleged sabotageImage: Finnish Police/Handout/REUTERSAdvertisementA Finnish court on Thursday convicted the Russian captain and a senior crew member of the cargo ship Fitburg for damaging two undersea telecommunications cables in the Gulf of Finland last year.

The Helsinki District Court found the two defendants guilty of "aggravated criminal damage."

The captain was sentenced to three and a half years in jail, according to the AFP news agency. The crew member, an Azerbaijani citizen, was sentenced to two years and 10 months.

The defendants denied any wrongdoing and have questioned Finland's jurisdiction in the case.

Finnish authorities seized the vessel on December 31 on suspicion that it had damaged cables linking Finland's capital, Helsinki, and Tallinn, Estonia.

Finnish police at the time said the ship had been dragging its anchor for hours when it was discovered.

The Fitburg and its 14-member crew had been en route to the port of Haifa, Israel, from the Russian city of St. Petersburg when the incident occurred.

Finland has stepped up efforts to protect its undersea infrastructure following a series of incidents involving cables and pipelines in the Baltic Sea since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.