SWEDISH CUSTOMS CHIEF CONFESSES:
ESTONIA CARRIED SOVIET MILITARY SECRETS
By Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press
Ten years after the sinking of the Baltic ferry Estonia, Europe's worst maritime disaster, a former Swedish customs chief has confessed that Soviet military secrets were being smuggled on the ill-fated passenger ferry.
Estonia, a passenger ferry sailing from Tallinn, Estonia to Stockholm, Sweden, with some 1,000 passengers on board, sank shortly after midnight on September 28, 1994. After two concussions shook the vessel, the ship listed and sank quickly - taking 852 lives. No one has been held responsible for the unexplained sinking of Estonia, Europe's worst maritime disaster in peacetime.
On Nov. 30, Swedish television (SVT 1) broadcast a program in which a former chief of customs in Stockholm confesses that Estonia carried Soviet military technology to the West. For four years, American Free Press, and the former Spotlight, has been the only U.S. newspaper to report on evidence that weapons smuggling may have been behind the sinking.
As AFP reported in August 2002: "…on its final crossing, Estonia …carried extremely sensitive cargo quite unlike the usual contraband of illicit drugs and smuggled humans. Deep in the ship’s hold, loaded on trucks headed for the West, was the fruit of decades of Soviet scientific research and development in space technology."
According to the customs chief, on two occasions shortly before Estonia sank, vehicles carrying Soviet military contraband were allowed to enter Sweden without inspection.
"I have been walking around thinking about what happened for ten years," Lennart Henriksson, Stockholm's former customs chief said. "Each time Estonia's name came up I've thought the little I know should be brought into the light of day. I want to clear my conscience."
Henriksson's confession sheds new light on the sinking of Estonia, a joint venture between a private Swedish company and the Estonian government. Prior to the SVT 1 exposé, reports of Soviet military technology being smuggled on the ferry were dismissed as "conspiracy theories."
Shortly before Estonia sank, Henriksson said he had been ordered to do something most unusual.
"Some time in the middle of September [1994] …my boss [Stig Sandelin] and I were called to a meeting with the director of customs [Inge Lindunger]. He said that a vehicle would be arriving on Estonia that should not be searched. He also gave me the vehicle's license number," Henriksson said.
Henriksson asked why the vehicle should not be searched. Lindunger, head of Sweden's eastern customs region, said it was an order. "But from where?" Henriksson asked.
"From the highest quarters," Lindunger replied.
Normally, Swedish customs searched every vehicle coming from Estonia. That a vehicle was let through without inspection was something Henriksson had never seen in 38 years of service.
When the ferry arrived on Sept. 14, 1994, Henriksson spoke to the driver of the vehicle that was to pass without inspection, a rented Volvo 745 station wagon driven by a Frank Larsson, a false identity.
When Henriksson told "Larsson" that customs was carrying out inspections, he "gave me a look, but I said the search would be faked," Henriksson said. "We opened a few boxes and as far as I could see it was military electronics in them."
Who was bringing military electronics into the country? The customs slip shows the car belonging to a non-existent company called "Ericsson Access AB," a fictitious subsidiary of AB LM Ericsson Finance. No address was given.
Henriksson discovered later that the car was a rental car. There is no evidence that Ericsson was involved in the smuggling. While the program reports that the Swedish military authorized the smuggling, the final destination of the military contraband is not known.
A week later, on September 20, 1994, a second, larger cargo of Soviet military technology arrived and was allowed to pass without inspection. This time it was a van and, once again, Henriksson merely glanced into the boxes.
"What were you thinking this second time?" reporter Lars Borgnäs asked.
"I thought it was a strange procedure," Henriksson said. "But orders are orders and you don't reflect too much on why."
According to Jutta Rabe, German researcher and author of a book and movie on the catastrophe, the Estonian military escorted two large trucks to the harbor in Tallinn on Sept. 27, 1994. On Sept. 28, Sweden's transportation ministry had orders to escort a shipment from the harbor to Stockholm's Arlanda airport, but the ship never arrived.
The final destination for the contraband on Estonia's final voyage was evidently not Sweden. Two cargo planes waiting at Stockholm's Arlanda airport, billed to the U.S. Embassy, suggest the material was headed for the United States.
SVT 1 confirmed that the smuggling was authorized by the Supreme Commander of Sweden's armed forces, Ove Wictorin. Customs superintendent Sandelin said there was an agreement between Wictorin and the commissioner of customs, Ulf Larsson, for Sandelin to clear the materials on arrival.
As AFP reported in 2002: "Rabe points to a group of Russian nationalists from the Soviet intelligence agencies as being the culprits behind the sinking of Estonia. According to Rabe’s sources, the so-called Felix Group included Vladimir Putin and Ivan Ivanov, respectively the current president and foreign minister of Russia, who were strongly opposed to the wholesale looting of the Soviet arsenal."
Igor Kristapovich, acting director of customs in Tallinn, had confiscated the surveillance videos of Estonia being loaded immediately after she sank. Three weeks later, Kristapovits took two bullets in the back of the neck in front of his apartment in Tallinn.
“It was the perfect coup," Rabe concluded, "which could have only been carried out by secret services or groups which include former members of the secret services as members, like the networks of terrorists, regardless of their origin or motivation.”
Prime Minister Göran Persson was disturbed by the revelations. "When this [weapons smuggling] was confirmed by the customs it was new information for us," Persson said.
Persson appointed chief justice Johan Hirschfeldt, to investigate the arrangement between the military and customs authorities. Hirschfeldt's report is due January 21, 2005, not enough time for an investigation, Gregg Bemis, an American who conducted a dive to the wreck with Jutta Rabe, told AFP.
"I certainly hope that Judge Hirschfeldt will realize that he has been given an opportunity to make a substantive contribution to the familes of the victims. It is an opportunity to determine whether or not these activities contributed to the tragic sinking of Estonia. Since it is well established that the JAIC [official] report was full of errors, Mr. Hirschfeldt should take this chance to obtain a proper forensic examination of the whole crime scene," Bemis told AFP.
Asked about the smuggling of military technology in the former Soviet Union in 1994, Aleksander Einseln, the retired U.S. Army general who became Estonia's first Supreme Commander, said: "Everything was for sale and anything was available if you could pay for it."
"If there was a military cargo on the night of the accident, it could explain, the extraordinary way in which the Estonia disaster was handled," Einseln said.
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