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The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

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Vixen said:
I believe, based on evidence - early newspaper reports, for example, that of course the authorities knew about the huge hole on the starboard side but preferred not to mention it.

IOW lying by omission.
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What evidence? you haven't provided any up to now.
 
JayUtah said:
Thank you. I was hoping for something specifically related to the part I quoted. Do you believe Margus Krum, that a submarine caused the starboard-side damage? If not, what in your opinion makes his claim non-credible?
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I think Margus Kurm has nationalistic interests so he is [perhaps unconsciously] biased towards Estonia and thus sees it as a Swedish submarine. I tend to go along with the strictly neutral and objective Professor Amdahl, marine collisions expert, who is Norwegian and has no partiality one way or the other that there was some kind of collision with a moving object.
 
Vixen said:
I think Margus Kurm has nationalistic interests so he is [perhaps unconsciously] biased towards Estonia and thus sees it as a Swedish submarine. I tend to go along with the strictly neutral and objective Professor Amdahl, marine collisions expert, who is Norwegian and has no partiality one way or the other that there was some kind of collision with a moving object.
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Then why do you keep bringing up Kurm? If you don't believe him, why advocate his claims?
 
Vixen said:
The early newspaper report, for one, dated November 1997. The JAIC report came out one month later. In addition, eye witness testimony is considered proper direct evidence in a court of law.
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This vague handwave in the general direction of answering the question might have been relevant, had there been *eyewitnesses* to what you’re asserting.

As has been pointed out multiple times in this thread, what counts as direct evidence is witness statements recounting multiple loud noises and sudden reduction in forward motion. Everything else arising from these statements is speculation.
 
Vixen said:
The bow visor fell off. It doesn't mean it was the cause of the accident, if a collision and/or explosion/s happened first.

The vanishingly few survivors time these events at or around 1:00am EET.

The JAIC time given for the thing falling off is fifteen minutes later.

Omission is as good as lying.
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But here's a thought: These mythical (for that is all they are) "collisions" and/or "explosions" are not claimed - as far as I understand, anyhow - to have occurred anywhere near the bow visor.

So, that being the case, the rather obvious question would be: exactly how/why would the bow visor have failed - especially in the manner in which the evidence shows it failed - if it happened after this "bomb"/"explosion" malarkey? After all, there's not really any credible mechanism for it to have failed either a) as a direct reaction to the "bomb"/"explosion", or b) as a reaction to the ship sinking. And, obviously, the odds on it coincidentally having failed in that tiny time window (relative to the age and history of the ship) is very close indeed to zero.

And yet..... all of the credible & reliable evidence, including structural/metallurgical analysis of the bow visor and bow ramp, points to the bow door having failed of its own volition owing to the combination of bad design/construction, poor maintenance, and the rough seas on the night of the sinking. And also, since the evidence shows that the bow visor and then the bow ramp failed in a specific manner, we know that the manner of their failure would have guaranteed a large volume/mass of seawater flooding the vehicle deck and fatally destabilising the ship. Oh and the manner of their failure is also entirely compatible with the passenger accounts of what they heard.
 
Vixen said:
They reported independently of each other as of the time of the accident when no-one had had a chance to put a spin on things or revise history, of hearing 'bangs' - most often two or three in rapid succession - and of having a sensation of colliding, i.e., thrown violently forward or to the floor. That is not the same as your hearing your neighbours banging away on DIY next door or phiwum's screen door slamming shut in the wind. As they say in Yorkshire: 'Shut gob, pin back lug'oles and put brain in gear'.
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They don't "say that in Yorkshire" (meaning, they don't say it any more or less than any other county in England). And if Yorkshire people were singularly well-known for such a saying, they wouldn't say it like that (more/better research needed on regional accent, dialect and patois, I think).
 
Vixen said:
The UK process for signing Treaties:

UK.Gov

Therefore, under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, why is there no response when UK citizens enquire as to the reasons for the UK signing the Estonia Treaty of 1995*?

*pdf here.


Freedom of Information Act aims:

ICO Org


A public body can refuse on these following grounds but it does clearly say a reason should be given for the refusal.

ICO

So, why cannot a survivor of the accident get a response to a perfectly reasonable request?
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Nope. You don't properly understand what's being referred to in the text you've quoted, including why it doesn't apply here. The UK's signatory status in the Estonia no-dive matter is under the aegis of laws and protocols that were ratified by the UK Parliament a long time ago.
 
Vixen said:
The report came out in December 1997. It was reported in a Finnish newspaper Kaleva - in 1997 - that there was a massive hole in the side of the vessel. It is not mentioned anywhere in the report. Banging your head against your desk is a pretty dumb thing to do, especially when you are actually wrong.

Ilta-Sanomat
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Ermmmm.... that's why I wrote ".... after the report's investigation" (my bolding here for emphasis).

This official visual investigation/inspection of the wreck would (obviously and necessarily) have taken place some time - and probably some considerable time - before the actual publication of the report.

Next.
 
Vixen said:
WRONG! The UK has a WAR graves Treaty policy but only when it directly affects the UK. It is not a Baltic nation and therefore does not logically have any need to have signed the Treaty or been invited to. Norway is not included, for example, and it is a lot nearer to the Baltic than the UK. Nor the Netherlands. Nor even Germany.

Stop making things up and please reference sources properly instead of talking off the top of your head.
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But you're fundamentally wrong. You don't know what you're talking about. You see the word "treaty" and immediately jump to the wrong conclusion.

And as for your last sentence: my new, weapons-grade irony-o-meter just made a horrible grinding noise then blew itself to pieces. I really don't know if it's even possible to get a more robust unit than that one.
 
Vixen said:
In addition, eye witness testimony is considered proper direct evidence in a court of law.
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I've also provided correction for you on this one already. Perhaps try to take it on board this time.

1) You (still) seem to be labouring under the misunderstanding that eyewitness testimony in a criminal trial is always automatically accepted by the court at face value as credible and reliable. That's not true. Eyewitness testimony is tested in court, via the process of direct- and cross-examination. And after that, it is down to the court to determine its view on the credibility/reliability of the claims of any given eyewitness. Only then is that eyewitness's claim accorded the correct weight by the court.


2) If the Estonia passengers were testifying in a criminal court (or even in a civil court), it's a racing certainty that the judge and the counsel would be instructing them only to give evidence about what they actually heard & experienced. They simply wouldn't have been allowed to draw their own inferences (and indeed, any lawyer who asked any of them a question along the lines of "What do you think caused the noise you heard?", or "Do you think the noise/jolt sounded like a collision?" would immediately draw an objection, and the objection would be sustained with the jury being told to disregard what had been said.


3) Eyewitness testimony in a criminal trial is only direct evidence if (provided that it's been determined by the court to be credible and reliable) it is evidence of the criminal act in question having been committed by the person(s) on trial.
 
LondonJohn said:
But here's a thought: These mythical (for that is all they are) "collisions" and/or "explosions" are not claimed - as far as I understand, anyhow - to have occurred anywhere near the bow visor.

So, that being the case, the rather obvious question would be: exactly how/why would the bow visor have failed - especially in the manner in which the evidence shows it failed - if it happened after this "bomb"/"explosion" malarkey? After all, there's not really any credible mechanism for it to have failed either a) as a direct reaction to the "bomb"/"explosion", or b) as a reaction to the ship sinking. And, obviously, the odds on it coincidentally having failed in that tiny time window (relative to the age and history of the ship) is very close indeed to zero.

And yet..... all of the credible & reliable evidence, including structural/metallurgical analysis of the bow visor and bow ramp, points to the bow door having failed of its own volition owing to the combination of bad design/construction, poor maintenance, and the rough seas on the night of the sinking. And also, since the evidence shows that the bow visor and then the bow ramp failed in a specific manner, we know that the manner of their failure would have guaranteed a large volume/mass of seawater flooding the vehicle deck and fatally destabilising the ship. Oh and the manner of their failure is also entirely compatible with the passenger accounts of what they heard.
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I think two separate explosions are being claimed.
We have a set of explosions that severed the bow visor and a separate mine or charge that blew a hole in the hull.
 
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Captain_Swoop said:
I think two separate explosions are being acclaimed.
We have a set of explosions that severed the bow visor and a separate mine or charge that blew a hole in the hull.
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Or it was a collision with the sub that wanted to attach the mine. Whatever she thinks works best at the moment is the current theory, subject to change within minutes.
 
Who would even suggest a 'mini sub' would try to attach a mine to a moving ship in a storm?

Each iteration of the story gets more bizarre.
 
phiwum said:
Or it was a collision with the sub that wanted to attach the mine. Whatever she thinks works best at the moment is the current theory, subject to change within minutes.
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When the facts are treated as infinitely malleable for the purposes of supporting a particular argument at a particular point in time, it removes that messy burden of having to keep track of both the facts and the claims made against them.

So, yes - there was a mini sub moving at high speed on the surface in a storm, flying under multiple flags at the same time, that first hit the Estonia, then attached a mine, before fleeing into the night undamaged whilst shaped charges planted by foreign agents were detonated to blow off the bow cap, then shortly thereafter those same agents went to the bridge and shot some people…
 
Kid Eager said:
When the facts are treated as infinitely malleable for the purposes of supporting a particular argument at a particular point in time, it removes that messy burden of having to keep track of both the facts and the claims made against them.

So, yes - there was a mini sub moving at high speed on the surface in a storm, flying under multiple flags at the same time, that first hit the Estonia, then attached a mine, before fleeing into the night undamaged whilst shaped charges planted by foreign agents were detonated to blow off the bow cap, then shortly thereafter those same agents went to the bridge and shot some people…
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Right! I forgot all about the hijacking!

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
 
Vixen said:
A memo was signed off by Kari Lehotola that an object the exact shape and dimensions of the bow visor had been picked up on a sonar image of the wreck in early October. It was lying several metres below the bulbous bow. Mysteriously, days later he said the navy was 'still searching for the bow visor' (they did not 'find' it until mid-October). If it came up on sonar, what made Lehtola say they had found it, but then say they had not after all? At that stage, they had no idea it was supposed to be missing! (Other than Carl Bildt's announcement shortly after the event.) Nor had the wreck been examined further.


You explain to me what happened there.
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And is there a link to this image?
 
Vixen said:
The UK process for signing Treaties:

UK.Gov

Therefore, under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, why is there no response when UK citizens enquire as to the reasons for the UK signing the Estonia Treaty of 1995*?

*pdf here.


Freedom of Information Act aims:

ICO Org


A public body can refuse on these following grounds but it does clearly say a reason should be given for the refusal.

ICO

So, why cannot a survivor of the accident get a response to a perfectly reasonable request?
Click to expand...


You mean like this one?

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/requ.../html/2/DfT response to FOI F0019860.pdf.html
 
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