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The new documentary “Estonia: the discovery that changes everything”, shown on Dplay, is causing a sensation around the world. The film reveals, among other things, a previously unknown four-meter-high hole in the ship’s hull, prompting demands for a new investigation of the disaster.
The film’s director, Henrik Evertsson, is internationally acclaimed, but is also charged with disorderly conduct. Along with another Swede from the team.
Do not dive
By law, the site of the Estonian sinking is considered a cemetery, so diving is prohibited. Evertsson denies wrongdoing because the team used a diving robot with an underwater camera and was never inside the wreck.
– I was called in for a police questioning earlier in the year. They surpassed me and interrogated me. It was a new experience, says Henrik Evertsson, 33, a director and journalist.
– We tell what we have done and what values are the basis. And he emphatically denied the crime. While doing the work, we have not violated the law and what it is intended to protect, he says.
The police were waiting at the pier.
Two German policemen were waiting at the pier in Rostock, Germany, when Evertsson and his film crew returned with their German-flagged dive boat after reconnaissance from Estonia last summer. The police wanted to seize the film’s material, at the request of a Swedish prosecutor.
– We refuse. It is very strange that the prosecutor wants to seize unpublished journalistic material. I am completely incomprehensible for such an initiative, says Henrik Evertsson.
District Attorney Helene Gestrin says her decision was correct when made because there was no published material to look at at the time.
– As seen now, I would not have had to investigate this material. It’s a decision that I still think needs to be made at that point, he tells Medierna at P1.
Trial in January
The trial will take place in Gothenburg in January. This will be the first time the Estonian peace law has been tried in court.
Henrik Evertsson says the team made ethical and legal considerations before work. The main task was to investigate if there was a hole in the boat and this was made faster and easier with a diving robot and an underwater camera.
– We weren’t there to desecrate any graves. We used a diving robot, we had minimal impact, he says.
Evertsson says it has been hectic days since the Estonian series with its five episodes was published. A lot of news comes out in the documentary, not just the details of the big hole that calls into question the entire established version of the sinking process.
Divers say
– The Accident Investigation Board did not take survivor information as seriously as we do in the series. Now another scenario arises. It begins with a loud bang, survivors tell how water enters under car tires, not over a gutter in the hallway as has been said before, says Henrik Evertsson.
The documentary also features representatives of a British diving company for the first time in the media. In 1994, the Swedish government was tasked with examining the wreck and they found that it would have been easy to salvage the bodies if they had been cleared. Instead, the governments of Sweden, Finland and Estonia decided to ban diving on the spot.
Evertsson says he receives many positive reactions from survivors and family members of those who died in the disaster. It says that people from all over Europe get in touch.
“Fantastic feeling”
– It’s a fantastic feeling, many call. They are crying, thank you. They say they are finally getting the answers they have been waiting for so many years, he says and continues:
– I hope they listen. They feel that no one has heard them.
The Norwegian Accident Investigation Board is investigating the new information that has emerged in the documentary and Prime Minister Stefan Löfven is not ruling out further dives. He has spoken with the Estonian Prime Minister about the matter and Finland is also participating in the discussions.
– There have been so many trips to Estonia that new research is needed that takes a holistic approach. An independent investigation that starts from the beginning. Sweden, Finland and Estonia are too close, so I hope they also get international help, says Henrik Evertsson.
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