Norwegian navy commander found guilty of negligence over frigate sinking
15 May 2023, 10:44
The KNM Helge Ingstad collided with an oil tanker in 2018.
The duty commander of a Norwegian Navy frigate that sank following a collision with an oil tanker in 2018 has been found guilty of negligence.
The unidentified officer was given a 60-day conditional sentence by the Hordaland district court. He had denied the charge.
“He is disappointed with the outcome,” the lawyer for Christian Lundin, 33, told Norwegian news agency NTB.
NTB said the officer had been on duty for eight minutes on November 8, 2018, when the 134m KNM Helge Ingstad collided with the Maltese-flagged oil tanker Sola TS, tearing a large hole in the frigate’s side in a harbour in Sture, north of Bergen.
The frigate’s 137 crew were evacuated before the vessel sank. Eight people were slightly injured.
The duty commander was the only person prosecuted over the incident. The prosecution has claimed that negligent navigation was the main reason for the collision.
The officer denied criminal guilt but acknowledged that he did not do everything right.
However, he felt it unfair to be held solely responsible for the wreck and said that mistakes were made on the tanker and at the maritime traffic centre, which was responsible for traffic in the region.
The frigate has since been raised and scrapped as it was deemed too costly to repair. The tanker was only slight damaged in the collision.
In February 2022, Twitt Navigation, the owner of the tanker, agreed to pay 235 million kroner (£17.6m) to the Norwegian state in a settlement relating to the collision.
