Sweden detains captain of Russian shadow fleet ship

A Swedish court has ordered the detention of the Russian captain of a ship suspected of sailing under a false flag as part of Moscow's shadow fleet.

The man, who has not been named, appeared in court in Ystad after being arrested on Friday by the Swedish Prosecution Authority on suspicion of using forged documents.

Members of the coast guard boarded the Sea Owl One in Swedish waters, where it was sailing under a Comoran flag they thought may have been bogus. The 228m (748ft) tanker is on a list of vessels sanctioned by the EU.

Moscow has relied on a network of tankers with obscure ownership or insurance to evade Western sanctions on its oil exports.

The Sea Owl One had been travelling from Santos in Brazil to Primorsk on Russia's Baltic coast when it was intercepted, and was known to have transported oil between Russia and Brazil in recent years, the Swedish coast guard said.

The Swedish Prosecution Authority confirmed to the BBC that the 55-year-old captain had been detained. A spokeswoman could not say how long he had been in custody for, but said it was usually for a period of 14 days.

Prosecutors previously said they intended to question the captain further.

The coast guard boarded the tanker while it was to the south of Trelleborg, on Sweden's southern tip, on Thursday evening.

The agency said it had intervened as it suspected the ship was not included in the ship register of the Comoros, an African island nation, and was therefore in breach of international law.

Officers' suspicions were raised further when the captain presented them with documents that appeared not to be genuine.

The Russian embassy in Sweden said 10 of the 24 sailors aboard the Sea Owl One, including the captain, were Russian, while the rest were from Indonesia.

It said on Saturday that it was closely monitoring the situation.

The BBC has approached the embassy for further comment.

It is the second time in a week that Swedish authorities have seized a vessel suspected of being a part of Russia's shadow fleet.

On 6 March, the coast guard took control on similar suspicions of the Caffa, a Guinean-flagged cargo ship sailing from Casablanca in Morocco to St Petersburg.

The vessel was suspected of carrying stolen Ukrainian grain and is now also anchored off the Trelleborg coast.

France has also seized several tankers thought to be part of Russia's shadow fleet, including the Grinch in the Mediterranean in January and the Boracay in the Atlantic in October.

Western sanctions have targeted Russia's oil exports since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 - a major revenue stream used to finance the war.

As well as dodging those sanctions by carrying Russian oil abroad, Moscow's shadow fleet has been accused of "spoofing" - or misrepresenting - their location data, sabotaging undersea cables and launching drones.