Investigative Team On Trial For Maritime Trespassing

Michael Hedges January 26, 2021 - Follow on Twitter

The documentary is a well-regarded film, now TV and podcast, genre. At their best, they enlighten the curious. Sometimes they reveal secrets, sometimes dark. Documentaries are popular and part of investigative journalism. The documentary style has also been subverted by fanatics and conspiracy theorists. The good ones win awards while the bad die of a thousand cuts.

A trial began this week (January 25) in Gothenburg, Sweden with two documentary makers in the dock. The charge is disturbing a grave; in this case a deep, dark, watery grave of 852 persons mostly from Sweden and Estonia. They were lost when the ferry M/S Estonia sank in rough seas.

It was a dark and stormy night in the autumn of 1994 on the Baltic Sea between Tallinn, Estonia and Stockholm, Sweden. A joint Swedish, Estonian and Finnish investigation concluded in 1997 that the M/S Estonia sank due to cargo door failure in high seas. That caused the ship to flood, flip over and sink in international waters.

A treaty in 1995 jointly signed by governments of Sweden, Estonia and Finland, Latvia, Poland, Denmark, Russia and the United Kingdom effectively prevented exploration of the wreck. The “law on protection of the peace of the grave after the ship Estonia” only kept interest in the tragedy high. The maritime loss of human life in peacetime was only exceeded by the Titanic sinking in 1912.

Investigative journalist and documentary maker Henrik Evertsson and underwater photographer Linus Andersson were charged by Swedish prosecutors in late September of violating the law on disturbing the grave by launching a “submarine operation” using a cable-controlled drone fitted with a camera. At worst, they could receive jail terms. A five-part documentary was commissioned by Discovery networks.

The team - including divers from Norwegian sea recovery service Rockwater - travelled to the site in international waters on a German-registered ship. That may be significant to their defence as Germany was the only Baltic region country not to sign the joint treaty on preserving the “marine cemetery” M/S Estonia. Estonia-the discovery that changes everything has been available on the Discovery+ streaming channel in several countries since last September.

Shortly thereafter Mr. Evertsson received Sweden’s Grand Journalism Prize for “most revealing story of the year.” Shown in the documentary is a large hole in the ship, previously unknown. The three governments indicated last December willingness to lift the ban for dives to the M/S Estonia by official investigators. That could come about this year.

Nearly 100 survivors and family members of the dead published an open letter asking for the Swedish Accident Investigation Board to “investigate again, thoroughly” in daily newspaper Aftonbladet (January 22). Prosecutors are not challenging the contents of the documentary, only the trespassing charge. “We expect them to be acquitted,” said Swedish Journalist Association chief executive Ulrika Hyllert, in a statement (January 25). “Anything else will be deeply serious and disturbing.”

“I go to this case with mixed feelings,” said Mr. Evertsson to journalisten.no (January 25). “Our journalism has so far led three governments to conduct new expert surveys of the wreck. At the same time, I am drawn into a case like this. But that's how it is, we get to stand in it.”

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