A Finnish district court ruled on Friday that it does not have jurisdiction to prosecute the captain and two officers of the Eagle S oil tanker, who are accused of breaking undersea power and internet cables in the Baltic Sea last year.

Finland has said the Eagle S is part of a shadow fleet of tankers used by Russia to circumvent sanctions on its oil exports. The December 25 incident was one of a string of cable and gas pipeline outages in the Baltic Sea since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, putting NATO forces in the region on high alert. Russia has denied involvement in cable cutting.

The trial was among the first judicial attempts to punish suspected perpetrators for damaging critical underwater infrastructure, but is complicated by provisions of international maritime law and the difficulty of proving criminal intent. The three crew members denied the charges.

"The District Court has today issued a judgment dismissing the charge in the case... along with the claims for damages arising from the charge, as it was not possible to apply Finnish criminal law to the case," the court said in a statement.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the power to prosecute any crime rests with the ship's flag state or the defendants' native countries, the court added.

The ship operated under a Cook Islands flag.

The ruling remains subject to appeal.

Defendants Blamed Technical Fault

The tanker, carrying Russian oil, dragged its 11,000 kg (24,000 lb) anchor for 90 km (56 miles) across the Gulf of Finland seabed, breaking the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 power cable and four internet lines, prosecutors said.

Finland charged the Georgian captain, as well as the Georgian first officer and the Indian second officer, with aggravated criminal mischief and aggravated interference with telecommunications.

The charges rested on allegations of gross negligence on the part of the crew regarding the poor condition of the vessel's anchor winch, rather than firm evidence that the anchor was intentionally dropped to cause damage, court documents showed.

The defendants stated at trial that the vessel's anchor had dropped unnoticed due to technical faults in the winch that was supposed to hold it in place.

They also rejected the cable owners' claims for tens of millions of euros in damages.

The prosecutor had asked the court to sentence the defendants to prison for a minimum of two-and-a-half years each.

The court lifted the defendants' travel bans at the end of the trial in September and they have since left Finland.

No charges were brought against the ship's owner, and the vessel was released from Finnish custody in March.

(Reuters - Reporting by Elviira Luoma and Anne Kauranen, editing by Essi Lehto, Terje Solsvik, Kevin Liffey, Elaine Hardcastle)