[ad_1]
852 people died in Estonia, now television footage of the shipwreck could put a belated turn on the case. The director of the documentary faces up to two years in prison for disturbing the peace of the dead
Two months after the sinking, parts of “Estonia” were rescued in November 1994.
Keystone
The television documentary “Estonia: The Fund That Changes Everything” this week shocked audiences in Estonia, Finland and Sweden and woke up governments. The filmmakers visited the wreckage of the MS Estonia ferry, which sank in 1994, with diving robots last year. Recently released images of the bottom of the Baltic Sea at a depth of 80 meters show a previously unknown four meter long crack in the bow of the ferry. A new investigation into the accident is now being requested in all three countries. However, the director of the multi-part documentary, the Swedish Henrik Evertsson, and another member of the television crew face two years in prison: they have to answer in Sweden for disturbing the peace of the dead.
After the sinking of the Titanic, the sinking of the Estonia on September 28, 1994 is the greatest catastrophe to be experienced by civil shipping in Europe: 852 people died in the stormy night, most of them trapped under the deck of the ship that was was sinking sailing from Tallinn. went to Stockholm. Only 137 survived. For Swedes in particular, the disaster off the Finnish coast is “one of our national traumas”, as the “Svenska Dagbladet” now writes.
On the one hand, this is because the majority of the fatalities were Swedes, but on the other hand, it is also due to the way the state investigation of the accident was carried out, which relatives and survivors considered deeply inappropriate: the Official report of the investigation, which was deemed to be the cause of the accident, was incorrect. The hinges and a bow hatch that opened in a storm left many questions unanswered. Among other things, inspectors from participating states had never examined the wreck, the Swedish government even suggested enclosing the wreck in a concrete jacket, outraging many relatives, and once again fired the conspirators. In his theses, sometimes it was a bomb, sometimes a submarine that had sunk the ship, sometimes the Russians were behind, sometimes the United States, sometimes Israel, sometimes the Arabs.
There should be new dives in the wreck
The governments of Estonia, Sweden and Finland issued a joint statement this week in which they stated that they “agree that there should be verification of the information shown in the documentation.” Members of the Estonian and Finnish governments are now expressly lobbying for them to dive into the wreck, if only to learn new conspiracy stories. In Estonia, Margus Kurm spoke and expressed his belief that the crack could only be explained by a collision with a submarine. Kurm is the country’s former attorney general and from 2005 to 2009 he was the head of an Estonian inquiry commission. Others believe that the hole could only have formed after the ship sank. In any case, reason enough to thoroughly examine the shipwreck, associations of my relatives.
The Discovery Channel documentary that sparked the new debate is now in the clutches of the Swedish judiciary. In 1995, several people lining the Baltic Sea agreed to a law declaring the Estonian shipwreck a sea grave and punishing any disturbance of the peace of the dead with up to two years in prison. Therefore, “diving and other underwater activities” are expressly prohibited. Therefore, the Swedish prosecutor’s office filed a lawsuit against director Henrik Evertsson and one of his employees in a Gothenburg court in June. The crew fights back: in view of the law, the Norwegian production company chartered a German dive boat, the MS Fritz Reuter from Rostock. Germany has never signed the law on the rest of the grave. “German flag in international waters, so German law applies,” Evertsson was quoted as saying by the daily Dagens Nyheter.
