Cont: The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part V

[Andy_Ross]

It is pretty standard for someone to be made accountable, even if it is only the shipowners left to answer for it. The Captain and the owners of The Herald of Free Enterprise were dragged before the courts to answer manslaughter and negligence charges. Despite the most appalling working practices and shocking lack of any safety whatsoever, the soft-hearted judge decided they had suffered enough and acquitted them.

However, they were brought to justice! It is not unusual or rare. Concordia and Oceanos were considered a disgrace for deserting the ship ahead of the passengers and punished accordingly.

Amazing people think this is quite unreasonable.

How do you punish dead men?

 

[Andy_Ross]

That is dated 1 October 1994, some three days after the accident. Let's wind back to the article of 29 Sept 1994, a Thursday, when Lehtola had only just been appointed the day before and his comments thus, relates to the Wednesday afternoon, the same day as the accident, albeit about sixteen hours later (but still day one!!!)

HS




Why are you so keen to cover this up? Was the newspaper somehow psychic and could foresee the bow visor theory or do you think Lehtola, who at that stage had interviewed nobody and had got all of his information from the three PM's dominated by Bildt?

What is your theory about the bow visor being blamed ON DAY ONE even though Superintendent Åke Sjöblom and marine engineer Gunnar Zahlée saw the deficiency as just a small detail - it could not have been the cause of (affected) the resulting accident?


Why are you so keen to have the bow visor as the cause of the accident when you must know there is no way anyone could come to a conclusion ON DAY ONE?

ETA: your article doesn't actually confirm Piht was dead nor does it provide any explanation for his being named as a survivor.

Because survivors told them that is what happened.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Oh please. Newspaper headline: Queen arrives in Melbourne.


If she did not, the next day, which would you expect to see:

1. "The Queen does not exist, our story came from nowhere.'
2. Correction: the Queen was not in Melbourne as reported. Sorry about that.

Or they just never bother printing anything.

 

[malbui]

A Google search for “Estonia”, “Atlantic Lock” and “accessory” doesn’t find anything other than this thread and its predecessors.

This is prima facie evidence that the CIA, KGB, EMI, KPMG and TDK are conspiring to tamper with Google searches. Open your eyes, sheeple.

 

[malbui]

How do you punish dead men?

Well, after the Restoration in 1660 the Royalists weren't satisfied with hunting down living regicides but they also dug up the bodies of dead ones and strung them up. Maybe that's what Vixen has in mind.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Here's what's unreasonable; demanding people be held accountable and brought to justice while at the same time spreading lies advanced by the very same people who would be found guilty in such a trial.

The MS Estonia was never designed to sail in the open ocean, and certainly not structurally sound enough to sail into that storm. The guilty parties are the company who owned the ship, and the entity who signed off on Estonia's expanded sailing route across open sea.

But no, you're looking at smugglers.

At the time both Sweden and Finland gave exemptions from SOLAS requirements for roro ferries with bow visors to allow them to sail on more than the coastal routes they would have been restricted to by SOLAS compliance.

 

[Vixen]

Don't you remember that MTV3 interviewed Henrik Sillaste and Hannes Kadak and showed it in the 19:00 news broadcast? The two men who said that the water got in through the bow gate? Then YLE reported on the interview at their main broadcast.

Do you think that reporters writing for the next day's paper didn't watch the TV news to see that interview? Do you think that Lehtola didn't watch the news broadcasts?

The news broadcast is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_4TYz1MRbM

[Edited to add: Lehtola explicitly referred to Sillaste as the source of the information that water got in from the front in his first interview to the press.]

Good catch/ I hadn't seen that video. However, do you really think Lehtola took his Day One conclusions from what Sillaste and the other guy (it is not Kadak) said on MTV Uutiset (News) as most people would watch YLE1 or 2. (MTV is full of commercial breaks.) Of course, they would all report similar news as each other.

Interesting Sillaste says they were pumping away and there was nothing else they could do. I am not sure JAIC mentioned this but I'll check. In addition, he claims they were giving out life jackets at the door to passengers going out to the upper decks and that he was calming people down. In addition, he describes people sitting in a lifeboat waiting and then it slipped in to the water. But wait...he said he was in the Engine Control Room Deck 0, all this time and finally left at 0130 - when any survivors would have long got out. He claims he climbed up the steps of the funnel and got out that way. He says he saw the raft with Linde, Kadak and Treu going past and that's how he joined them. Yet he he is claiming to have helped about twelve people into the raft. But surely he was last or near last to have got in.

All very odd that it can be determined that the car deck was flooded simply from an engineer glancing at a monitor screen in the Engine Control Room and conclude that the cause of this must have been the bow visor faulty design.

 

[Vixen]

Thank you for sharing your opinion on the Herald of Free Enterprise sinking. However, that's not what I asked.

Regarding the topic of this thread, the sinking of Estonia:

Who should have been arrested?

What offenses should they have been charged with?

Under whose legal authority should the arrests and charges have been made?

What should the just sentences have been for those offenses?

You're paying no more attention to this "elephant" than anyone else if you can't or won't answer those questions.

IMV the culprits should have been charged with whatever they could have thrown at them by the book.


Jurisdiction fell to Sweden and their prosecutor opened various cases but never proceeded to any prosecution.

Given there were about 500 Swedish victims you can begin to understand why the relatives felt aggrieved.

 

[Vixen]

The short summary is: We don't know what happened to Piht because people tell different things about him.

It explicitly mentions that the people who supposedly interviewed Piht deny that it ever happened. They don't specifically say that they were wrong when one of their first articles contained one sentence about future interrogations of Piht, but if you read the article you definitely can't come to the conclusion that the author believes that Piht is certainly alive.

That was the last article that HS published in the immediate aftermath of Estonia that mentions Piht at all.

Well, the article is an online one (so subject to later editing) and dated 1 Oct 1994. The US cargo planes left Arland IIRC 29th and 30th Sept 1994, so had it been the decision to let us say remove the Estonian survivors, then it would already be classified by that point. So of course the journalists wouldn't report anything further. All it could say was someone went to the Turku police and asked for the list of survivors...and lo and behold...Avo Piht's name was not amongst them. Quelle surprise!

 

[Vixen]

No, that's not the only way in which Sweden's actions failed to satisfy the elements of the crime of enforced disappearance as defined in the Rome Statute. Words have meanings, and laws have definitions. No court found Sweden guilty of enforced disappearance, as you wrongly claimed. Sweden did not admit to the crime of enforced disappearance. That's because their actions simply did not fit the crime, no matter how fervently you wish that were the case.

It forked out $500,000. Apology is expressed in compensation.

The whole point is that if the Estonian senior crew were 'extradited' so to speak by the CIA on request to Sweden, then not only was that a 'disappearance' (under whatever law you would like to quote) but also a breach of the fact they were Estonian citizens and thus Estonia had a right to know, as well as represent them. The Estonian Embassy say their officials where physically barred from visiting Estonian nationals in hospital or allowed a phone call. Why? What innocent reason is there for this?

 

[Vixen]

Indeed.

And that's not to mention that the "German Group of Experts" (LOL) all hedged their bets in any case.

None of them made definitive declarations (e.g. "this is evidence of explosive detonation"); rather, their "assistance" to the shipyard invariably took the form of "...consistent with a detonation" or "it's possible that...." etc.

And of course that's because a) none of the evidence actually is/was clearly indicative of a cause different from that found by the JAIC; and b) none of the experts - quite correctly and ethically - was prepared to provide anything more than the weakest support for the shipyard's nakedly-obvious thesis (i.e. that the disaster was caused by something - anything - other than the failure of the bow visor and bow ramp)

That is how professional/scientific expert witnesses speak. It is for the Accident Investigators or a Judge in a court to decide whether their findings are definitive or not.

No professional person will say, 'M'Lud, it was mass murder. I done found traces of a bomb.' even an auditor on spotting a fraud will only 'qualify' his or her audit. He won't say, 'This client is an embezzling crook'. It is against professional standards to do so.

FWIW I consider the German Group of Experts to be serious, reasonable and thorough in their approach.

 

[Vixen]

Here's what's unreasonable; demanding people be held accountable and brought to justice while at the same time spreading lies advanced by the very same people who would be found guilty in such a trial.

The MS Estonia was never designed to sail in the open ocean, and certainly not structurally sound enough to sail into that storm. The guilty parties are the company who owned the ship, and the entity who signed off on Estonia's expanded sailing route across open sea.

But no, you're looking at smugglers.

The JAIC state clearly that on the day of departure the Estonia was seaworthy.

You agree with the JAIC.

 

[Vixen]

A Google search for “Estonia”, “Atlantic Lock” and “accessory” doesn’t find anything other than this thread and its predecessors.

Look. Whilst I have a good memory, I can't be expected to always remember where I read something.

I am sorry I mentioned it now. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

 

[Vixen]

Your English is usually much better than this. This is stilted and uses unusual sentence constructions. The rest of your post is in your usual flowing English. Is it taken from somewhere else and run through google translate?

They are 100% my own words.

 

[JayUtah]

It forked out $500,000. Apology is expressed in compensation.

For denying them due process, not for enforced disappearance.

...a 'disappearance' (under whatever law you would like to quote)

There are two laws in question. One is the one Sweden actually broke, which forbids deporting people to a place the state knew or reasonably suspected would torture the deportees. The other is the law against enforced disappearance, which is an entirely separate thing from deportation. You claim this latter one is the one Sweden broke. You're simply factually incorrect.

 

[JayUtah]

IMV the culprits should have been charged with whatever they could have thrown at them by the book.

Who are the culprits?

 

[Vixen]

Don't forget the 'snail dynamite' embarrassment.

Like English, there are words in Finnish that have several different meanings.

Such as kuusi and palaa.

Anyway, I am glad my error made your day.

 

[JayUtah]

That is how professional/scientific expert witnesses speak.

How many times have you been a scientific expert witness? How many times have you done forensic scientific or engineering investigative work for a public commission? How many times for a private interest?

It is for the Accident Investigators or a Judge in a court to decide whether their findings are definitive or not.

No public investigative board is obliged to consider defenses proffered by participants in the event under investigation.

It is against professional standards to do so.

What are your professional qualifications in forensic science or engineering?

FWIW I consider the German Group of Experts to be serious, reasonable and thorough in their approach.

But then you're not at all qualified to make that determination, are you? This whole answer is just another "Vixen knows best" exercise.

 

[JayUtah]

The JAIC state clearly that on the day of departure the Estonia was seaworthy.

Asked and answered dozens of times.

 

[JayUtah]

Look. Whilst I have a good memory, I can't be expected to always remember where I read something.

No one can. But you've told us that you aspire to, and achieve, a higher standard of scholarship, and you've assured us that your posts are carefully researched and documented from primary sources. When we discover, as is frequently the case, that you're just parroting vaguely-recalled conspiracy claims, we are naturally amused.