- Can I go home now? Can I see my wife and children?
Some confusion arose in the courtroom in the Gothenburg District Court at 4.30pm on Friday.
The judge had just announced that the Russian captain of the ship Misje Verde, which ran into and sank the pleasure boat with the family in the Hakefjord on July 28, is now a free man.
The interpreter answered the captain's question and received an affirmative answer: If he wanted to, he could now go and get his things up in the detention center and then set off.
Six weeks have passed since the seven-meter-long snipe was sucked under the bulb, the "bullet" at the front of the 90-meter-long Norwegian-owned cargo ship.
The time was then 21.27. The end of two families' nice holiday week in their boat along the coast of Bohuslän ended in tragedy. A father and little son miraculously survived, the wife and daughter drowned.
Over the course of two days, everything from steady stories from two sorely tried brothers was heard to a review of advanced maritime law rules and legal interpretations of what actually constitutes criminal negligence.
It is extremely unusual for one of the Swedish Maritime Administration's pilots to be prosecuted for a serious crime in the service, and therefore, and as a sign of collegial support, several of the authority's management plus a number of fellow pilots were present in the courtroom.
The pilot is also not taken out of service.
- He is not piloting now, but has other tasks while waiting for the verdict, says the Norwegian Maritime Administration's communications director Niclas Härenstam.
The pilot himself said:
- I didn't notice anything about the accident when it happened, but I will carry it with me for the rest of my life. This has taken a toll on me.
But the conclusions about who should be held responsible for the collision have thus spread widely.
Chamber prosecutor James von Reis took in:
- Compare if a recreational boat caused this, then the question of guilt would have been resolved a long time ago, now it would be strange and extremely offensive if two professional officers would get away with this. the same responsibility must be placed upon them, when in front of a merchant ship.
The captain's lawyer Taavo Tuula thus pointed to the pilot - despite the fact that the captain himself earlier on Friday caused the courtroom to gasp by answering "I" to the prosecutor's question about who was responsible for the incident.
- As the commander, I am always responsible, around the clock, the captain had replied.
His defender felt compelled to do a retrial later, and the captain clarified: His responsibility was more overall for the ship, but that the accident happened - it was the pilot's responsibility.
But the pilot's lawyer Thomas Håkansson countered forcefully when he launched his conclusion that the entire foundation for the prosecution, that the pilot acted as the ship's lookout and would thus have seen to the discovery of the two pleasure boats on the Hakefjord, is wrong.
- The regulations are clear, he said, pointing to the Swedish Transport Agency's regulation on watchkeeping and an international convention that a lookout must be someone who is part of the crew.
- My client simply must not be on the lookout.
As DN previously wrote, the defense also raised a 30-year-old appeals court judgment that said that this part of the Hakefjord should be considered a narrow fairway in legal terms. The old verdict concerned a fisherman who laid out nets in the middle of the fairway when a container ship was about to pass.
In the case of a "narrow fairway", a responsibility falls on boats under 20 meters in length to keep out of the way of overtaking vessels that have difficulty turning in a narrow fairway.
The prosecutor took the opportunity to dismiss that sentence in advance, saying that the old case involved a much larger vessel than the Misje Verde. But Håkansson had an answer in his back pocket.
- In the case from 1996, the ship was referred to a 650 meter wide fairway, now it was 317 meters. So relative to Misje Verde's size, they had to navigate a narrower fairway.
Both the prosecutor and the two defense lawyers tiptoed in the courtroom over the question of whether the sniper who was hit and lowered actually had a responsibility for what happened. The prosecutor had already made it clear early on that, in that case, it was not in proportion to what the family had suffered.
Now the prosecutor James von Reis said that if the district court were to come to the conclusion that the snipe was complicit, "then it is only to an insignificant extent, maybe they could have stayed longer more to starboard in the fairway".
- But absolutely nothing punishable.
Pilotsen's lawyer Thomas Håkansson concluded:
- What caused this? I would say several altogether very unfortunate circumstances converging in an extremely unfortunate outcome. But the accusation, it is not substantiated.
The Gothenburg District Court announces the verdict on September 30.
