1994 Estonia-Sweden-accident

[Fred Vloo]

Victims' relatives demand new probe of 1994 Baltic ferry disaster
   
Relatives of the victims of a 1994 Baltic Sea  ferry sinking that claimed 852 lives are stepping up pressure for a new probe  of enduring claims that the disaster was caused by an explosion.
So much new evidence has emerged in recent years that we no longer have  even the slightest doubt that the international report and its conclusions  compiled and published in 1997 did not indicate the true reasons why the ship  sank,according to Helje Kaskel, head of the Estonia Litigation Association.
The association of victims' relatives will Sunday launch a week-long  publicity campaign to highlight why a new international investigation is  needed, she said.
The ferry Estonia sank on the night of September 28, 1994, as it sailed  from the Estonian capital Tallinn to Stockholm in Sweden.  
All but 137 of the 989 passengers and crew on board perished. Most of the  victims were Swedish.
An international probe in 1997 ruled that faulty bow doors which gave way  in a storm had caused the accident, the worst in the Baltic in peace time.
But both Estonia and Sweden opened new investigations in 2005 after many  relatives of the dead, shipping experts and politicians claimed the ferry went  down following an explosion.
An acknowledgment by Sweden that Soviet military equipment had been  transported on the ferry on several occasions in 1994 gave credence to the  theory.  
Estonia had broken free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991, but the  Red Army only left the country on August 31, 1994.
The Estonian report, issued in 2007, said that chemical analyses had ruled  out an explosion, at least near the bow doors.
But Kaskel, whose organisation groups victims' relatives, said the use of  the ferry to transport Soviet equipment to unknown recipients remained "among  the most disturbing information" to have emerged.
The Estonian probe, led by state prosecutor Margus Kurm, had taken issue  with several areas of the 1997 report.
Kurm's report included testimony from two crew members who said that the  car-deck ramp remained closed, raising the question of why divers found water  on the deck below.
Until it's known when and how the water got below the car deck, it is not  possible to describe the sinking of the ship accurately," Kurm told this  week.
Kurm also complained that Swedish authorities had consistently rejected his  request to meet the Swedish divers who observed and filmed the wreck in 1994,  before the access to the underwater grave site was permanently prohibited.
Fuelling theories about the sinking is the fact the United States has  acknowledged it holds documents about the disaster but that they cannot be  released for security reasons.
There have even been suggestions that the ferry could have collided with a  submarine. There were NATO manoeuvres in the Baltic at the time
But Kari Lehtola, a Finnish member of the 1997 probe team, has said there  are no unanswered questions.
When catastrophes occur, people feel a need to find someone to blame,"  Lehtola was quoted as saying recently in the Estonian daily Postimees.

[Mike]

Hi Fred
I read your post with interest and of coarse sadness for all those who lost their lives on that terrible night.
One day the truth may come out as it always does, or recently like we had a documentry in the UK on Sky on the Sinking of the Italian liner 'Andrea Doria' and the 'Stockholm' which hit her, as the documentry unfolded it became who hit who! and was it foggy or not, who misread the radar?
It is also like another  recent documentry on the 'Titanic' when you learn that in the crows nest they were never given any binoculers, and the need to maintain speed (in fog) so they could arrive on time and the obvious unhappy ships officers due to crew changes just before she sailed!
All these accidents are a terrible loss of life whatever happens or why! but as above one day we will learn the truth.

Regards
Mike