As captain, I do not want you to think that I do not take responsibility for my actions. I came here to tell the truth, says the man in the district court in Helsinki.
The captain, a Georgian citizen, has been charged in Finland, along with two other officers on Eagle S, for having caused the widely publicized cable breaks in the Gulf of Finland in December last year through sabotage.
Eagle S is suspected of having dragged its anchor along the seabed for about nine miles and thus damaged five underwater cables between Finland and Estonia.
According to the captain, the crew received no indication that anything was wrong with the anchor.
There was no reason to doubt that everything was not in order, he says in court.
Prosecutor Mikko Larkia, who intends to plead for more than two years in prison, doubts the captain's statement.
If a ship is dragging an anchor behind it for several hours over 90 kilometers, is it really possible that no one would notice it? he says.
The ship is flagged in the Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean. But Finnish authorities believe it is part of the so-called Russian shadow fleet.
The cable breaks are some in a series last year that many experts believe are part of Russian hybrid warfare.
