Finnish court jails captain and crew member over Baltic cable damage

A Finnish court has sentenced the captain and a crew member of the cargo ship Fitburg to prison terms for causing deliberate damage to two submarine telecommunications cables in the Gulf of Finland last year.

The Helsinki District Court handed the captain a prison term of three years and six months and sentenced an Azerbaijani crew member to two years and ten months. The court concluded that the vessel dragged its anchor and anchor chain along the seabed for a distance of about 130 kilometres and that the action was intentional.

The seizure and legal case

Finnish authorities seized the Fitburg on 31 December 2025 while the ship was voyaging from Russia to Israel amid suspicions that it had damaged cables linking Helsinki and Estonia. The defendants remain in Finland under travel bans and have denied the charges, also contesting Finland's jurisdiction in the matter.

According to the verdict, the court ordered the two convicted men to share compensation of about €1.9 million, and additionally required the captain to pay roughly €85,000. Their lawyers said the captain will appeal the ruling, while the crew member has not yet decided whether to file an appeal.

Finland has intensified measures to protect its undersea infrastructure following a string of incidents targeting cables and pipelines in the Baltic Sea since 2022. The Fitburg case is the latest high-profile prosecution related to those damage incidents.

Photo: press material from the event