Published
NorwayFour Russians arrested for violating photography ban
The three men and a woman arrested in northern Norway claimed to be sightseeing. They are suspected of getting too close to a strategic site.
Norwegian law enforcement is increasing surveillance near the Karst gas site, not far from the city of Stavanger.
AFP
Norwegian police announced on Monday the arrest last Thursday of four Russians suspected of violating a photography ban, following a series of similar arrests in a climate of nervousness at strategic sites in the country. The exact nature of the object or site in which the four Russians – three men and a woman – had been interested was not disclosed. The four Russians were arrested in the north of the country, in a car registered in Russia and placed the next day in pre-trial detention for seven days.
Arrived from Finland in late September or early October, the four individuals, aged in their twenties, were arrested with a “significant” volume of photos, but reject the charges, claiming to be simple tourists, said an official of the police, Gaute Rydmark, with the TV2 channel. Norwegian Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl declined to comment on the case, but said “there is increased pressure once morest Norway, from an intelligence point of view.”
No drone for them
According to the police, the quartet was not equipped with a drone, unlike two other Russians arrested in recent days, also in northern Norway, while the Scandinavian country has, like several other Western nations, banned the overflight of its territory to the Russians because of the military offensive in Ukraine.
Now Europe’s largest gas supplier, Norway has tightened security around its oil and gas facilities following mysterious drone flights – including near some offshore platforms – and the alleged sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, in nearby Baltic Sea.
On Sunday, the airspace around Stavanger, the kingdom’s oil capital, was briefly closed following a new report of an unmanned craft seen in the skies of this region located in the south-west of the country.
(AFP)
