Finnish police don’t suspect criminal activity regarding damaged data cables in south of country

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BERLIN (AP) — Finnish police said Tuesday that “there is no reason to suspect any criminal activity” in connection with damage to two data cables running across the land border between Sweden and Finland, saying the damage was created by excavation work.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/12/2024 (302 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BERLIN (AP) — Finnish police said Tuesday that “there is no reason to suspect any criminal activity” in connection with damage to two data cables running across the land border between Sweden and Finland, saying the damage was created by excavation work.

The two cables were repaired Tuesday, a day after they were damaged, affecting 6,000 private customers and 100 businesses, a company providing digital infrastructure and data communication in Northern Europe said.

Global Connect said the internet cables were damaged in two separate places in southern Finland on Monday.

The logo of the Swedish digital infrastructure provider GlobalConnect is pictured in Vantaa, Finland, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (Markku Ulander/Lehtikuva via AP)
The logo of the Swedish digital infrastructure provider GlobalConnect is pictured in Vantaa, Finland, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (Markku Ulander/Lehtikuva via AP)

The first fiber breakage happened on Monday morning, the other one in the afternoon.

“During the night the first of the cables was repaired, so we could restore internet to approximately 95% of all the customers,” said Global Connect’s spokesman in Sweden, Niklas Ekström, adding that by noon on Tuesday the second cable had also been fixed and that all customers should have internet again.

Similar cable damage happens about every couple of months, but it was unusual that two cables in the same region were damaged on the same day, Ekström told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Stockholm.

Finland’s minister of transportation and communications, Lulu Ranne, wrote on X that “authorities are investigating the matter together with the company. We take the situation seriously.”

However, on Tuesday afternoon, police in Finland put out a statement saying they had investigated both incidents and that “there is no suspicion of any criminal offense in either case, as the damages were caused by excavation work.”

Police added they would not initiate a criminal investigation into either case.

The incident comes after the rupture of two data cables on the Baltic Sea bed last month. The two, one running from Finland to Germany and the other from Lithuania to Sweden, were both damaged in Swedish waters.

FILE - An optical fibre cable of the Swedish digital infrastructure provider GlobalConnect is being laid underground in Espoo, Finland, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Vesa Moilanen/Lehtikuva via AP, File)
FILE - An optical fibre cable of the Swedish digital infrastructure provider GlobalConnect is being laid underground in Espoo, Finland, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Vesa Moilanen/Lehtikuva via AP, File)

Finnish, Swedish and German authorities launched investigations into that incident.

Germany’s defense minister said at the time the damage appeared to have been caused by sabotage, though there is no proof at present.

Last week, Sweden formally asked China to cooperate in explaining the rupture of the Baltic Sea data cables where a China-flagged vessel had been sighted.

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