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Sweden has sharply criticized China for refusing to allow the Nordic country’s top investigator aboard a Chinese ship suspected of cutting two cables in the Baltic Sea.
The Yi Peng 3 sailed from its berth in international waters between Denmark and Sweden on Saturday, and appears to be headed for Egypt after Chinese investigators boarded the vessel on Thursday.
The Chinese team allowed representatives from Sweden, Germany, Finland and Denmark on board as observers, but denied access for Henrik Söderman, the Swedish public prosecutor, according to authorities in Stockholm.
“This is something the government takes seriously. It is unusual that the ship left without the prosecutor being given the opportunity to inspect the ship and question the crew within the framework of a Swedish criminal investigation,” said the foreigner. minister Maria Malmer Stenergard in comments given to the Financial Times.
The Swedish government has forced the Chinese authorities for the bulk carrier to move from international waters to Swedish territory to allow a full investigation into the cutting of the Swedish-Lithuanian and Finnish-German data cables. last month.
People close to the investigation said Thursday’s boarding showed there was little doubt it was involved in the incident.
Yi Peng 3 belongs to Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, a company that owns only one other ship and is based near the eastern Chinese port city of Ningbo. A representative of Ningbo Yipeng told the FT in November that “the government has asked the company to cooperate with the investigation”, but did not respond to further questions.
There is division among countries over the motivation behind cutting the cables. Some people close to the investigation said they believe it was poor seamanship that may have caused the Yi Peng 3’s anchor to drag on the seabed in the Baltic Sea.
However, other governments have said privately that they suspect Russia was behind the damage and may have paid off the ship’s crew.
The severing of the two cables is the second time in 13 months that a Chinese ship has damaged infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.
The New Polar Bear, a Chinese container ship, damaged a gas pipeline in October 2023 by dragging its anchor under the Baltic Sea for a long distance during a storm. Officials reacted slowly to the incident, allowing the ship to leave the region without stopping, something they wanted to prevent in the case of the Yi Peng 3.
Nordic and Baltic officials are skeptical about the possibility of the same thing happening twice in quick succession. “The Chinese must be terrible captains if this continues to happen without fault,” said a Baltic minister.