Norway stops a ship suspected of involvement in damage to a Baltic Sea cable

OSLO, Norway — A Norwegian-owned and Russian-crewed ship that authorities suspect may have been involved in damage to an underwater fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland has been stopped off Norway, police said Friday.

The Silver Dania was stopped on Thursday evening and brought into the port of Tromsø in northern Norway on Friday morning by a Norwegian coast guard vessel, Norwegian police said in a statement. They said that followed a request from Latvian authorities and a ruling by a Norwegian court.

Police said there's suspicion that the ship, which was sailing between the Russian ports of St. Petersburg and Murmansk, was involved in serious damage to the cable in the Baltic Sea. They didn't elaborate, but said they were searching the ship and conducting interviews.

Damage to the data transmission cable running from Ventspils, Latvia, to Gotland was detected on Sunday. Later that day, Swedish prosecutors announced that they had opened a preliminary investigation into suspected sabotage and ordered the detention of a vessel suspected of damaging the cable, the Malta-flagged Vezhen.

That ship's Bulgarian owner said that it was possible that the Vezhen had accidentally caused a cable to break, but dismissed any possibility of sabotage or any other action on the part of the crew.