Eerik gets medal
Sergei Demchenko, Lithuanian national formerly called 'German-based businesman' by prosecutors, has been sentenced to three years in a penal colony by a Moscow court.
The 37-year-old struck a deal with the prosecution, fully admitted his guilt, and assisted in the investigation into the attack on the ‘Arctic Sea’ in the North Atlantic last year,
Latvian citizen Dmitry Savins confessed earlier this year, he was the second crew member to do so after Andrei Lunev pleaded guilty to hijacking and was sentenced to five years.
As part of a plea bargain Savins testified against the alleged mastermind behind the attack, Eerik-Niiles Kross, the former head of Estonia’s foreign intelligence service.
Latvian prosecutors said there was no evidence linking Kross to the Arctic Sea seizure. Eerik-Niiles Kross, who served as the director of Security Coordination Office in the Estonian State Chancellery, which is connected to the Ministry of Defense Information Service (Riigi Teabeamet), from 1995 to 2000.
In 2009, a deal was allegedly struck between Russian and Middle Eastern businessmen,to evade the' technical' delays of the S-300 missile delivery. Some sources claim the Russian military's weapons industry was implicated in the deal and transferred a number of new missiles to Kaliningrad. However the Kremlin was uninvolved, and apparently the deal was carried out in secret between businessmen from the private sector. After the deal was executed, an intelligence agency learned of the ship's departure with the weapons towards Algeria, a country located on a regularly used route for the transfer of weapons to Iran and Syria. The Arctic Sea docked in Kaliningrad in June to undergo various repairs.
On July 24,2009, the Arctic Sea, manned by a Russian crew and carrying a cargo of what was declared to consist solely of timber, was allegedly boarded by hijackers off the coast of Sweden. The story goes that the hijacking of the 'Arctic Sea' was ordered by the Moscow government.after discussions with other countries to prevent the delivery of the missiles to Iran. here more
"Allegedly they did not know the extent of the Estonia documents that Wikileaks acquired."
Eerik-Niiles Kross - a former high-level security analyst who advised the Georgian government - believes the Wikileaks revelations could endanger US relations with its allies. "Last time, Wikileaks revealed military information about Afghanistan, which in some sense was a direct threat to many lives. This time, they will reveal insider diplomatic information, which will not necessarily endager anybody, but it definitely threatens relations between the US and its allies," said Kross. "It's unfortunate that it happened because it endangers honest dialogue in the future within inner circles and with allies because everyone fears that it might somehow reach the newspapers."
Nevertheless, Kross believes the documents will reveal nothing scandalous about Estonia. "It is possible that there are judgements about the profile of some Estonian politician or diplomat, but those are only the personal matters of a few. There is nothing there that would harm bilateral relations." here
