Chinese captain in Baltic sea cable damage case appears in Hong Kong court

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HONG KONG (Reuters) -The captain of a Hong Kong-registered ship alleged to have damaged undersea cables in the Baltic Sea was assigned a lawyer in a Hong Kong court on Friday, with the case adjourned until September to allow the prosecution to gather more evidence.

Wan Wenguo, the captain of the container ship NewNew Polar Bear, appeared in Hong Kong’s Eastern magistrates’ court without legal representation so was assigned a duty lawyer by the court.

The 43-year-old Chinese national is alleged to have caused “criminal damage” to an underwater natural gas pipeline and submarine telecom cables between Finland and Estonia on October 8, 2023, according to a Hong Kong charge sheet seen by Reuters.

The document added the defendant “without lawful excuse damaged the property belonging to another” and that he had been “reckless as to whether such property would be damaged.”

The magistrate adjourned the case for three months until September 26, after the prosecution said it required time to gather documents and other evidence from Finnish and Estonian authorities.

Wan also faces two other charges for alleged violations of shipping rules including the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. During Wan’s first hearing in May after his arrest, he made no application for bail and was remanded in custody. Wan again chose not to apply for bail on Friday and was taken into detention.

The Baltic Sea region has been on high alert for sabotage after a string of outages of power cables, gas pipelines and telecoms since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022.

Some European governments have accused Russia of hybrid attacks and sabotage of some critical infrastructure, but Moscow has denied such claims, saying the West is seeking to undermine Russian interests through an information war.

Finnish authorities allege that the NewNew Polar Bear severed the subsea gas pipeline, the Balticconnector, which links Finland and Estonia under the Baltic Sea, by dragging its anchor along the seabed.

Estonian police, meanwhile, suspect the ship also damaged telecoms cables connecting Estonia to Finland and Sweden on October 7-8, before hitting the gas pipeline on its way to a port near Saint Petersburg in Russia.

Finnish and Estonian investigators, however, have been unable to determine whether the damage was accidental or deliberate, and have not yet provided their conclusions.

(Reporting by James Pomfret in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki; Editing by Kate Mayberry)