ILL-FATED ESTONIA FERRY USED FOR WEAPONS TRANSFERS Part II

continued from http://www.elaestonia.org/eng/index.php?module=lingid&link=162

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

In Tallinn, at noon on Sept. 28, 1994, the names of survivors, provided by the Estonian Department of Transportation, were read over the radio. Kalev Vahtras, the ship's quartermaster, was one of them.

Silver Linde, a surviving seaman, told Rabe that he had shared a room at Turku University Hospital with Vahtras. Vahtras and Linde were friends and the two had been able to talk in the hospital. Vahtras had no noticeable injuries, although his body temperature was low and he was wrapped in blankets, Linde said.

Linde went to visit other survivors and left Kalev alone in the room. When Linde returned with another crewmember, they discovered that Vahtras was gone. His entire bed had vanished. Linde asked a nurse about Vahtras and was told he had been transferred to another hospital. A list of survivors from Turku hospital shows Vahtras' name and body temperature.

Vahtras' wife went to Turku and was told her husband had been sent to a hospital in Sweden. Eventually an unrecognizable and disfigured corpse said to be Vahtras was returned to the Vahtras family with a death certificate which read: "Drowned in the Baltic Sea."

Linde is currently serving a 9-year prison sentence in Finland, the apparent victim of being framed on drug trafficking charges.

THE CENSORED RESCUE

Aftonbladet, the Swedish daily, reported on the day of the sinking that rescue worker Kenneth Svensson, on a rescue trip with Swedish Navy helicopter Y-64, rescued 9 people at about 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 28. Half an hour later, Aftonbladet reported, the helicopter took the rescued to Huddinge Hospital in Stockholm, arriving at 4:30 a.m., with nine persons, one of whom was dead. There is, however, no available information as to who these 9 people were.

Kenneth Svensson's multiple rescues, however, were censored from the final report (JAIC) published three years later.

According to the JAIC report, Y-64 only rescued one person at 5:10 a.m. Svensson received a medal for heroic service from Owe Wictorin and was requested not to discuss the matter. As mentioned above, Wictorin had authorized the smuggling of Soviet weapons technology on Estonia in the first place.

Jan Lindqvist, information chief for Sweden's civil aviation administration, provided Anér with documentation of two private planes that left Stockholm's Arlanda airport carrying a total of 9 unregistered passengers on the 28th and 29th of September.

The first plane, a Boeing 727-200, then registered VR-CLM, belonged to Larmag Aviation Cayman Ltd., a Bermuda-based company owned by Lars-Erik Magnusson, a Swedish casino owner and real estate mogul who invested heavily in an oil and gas scheme in Turkmenistan in 1994 with funds taken from another firm, Fermenta.

The 161-seat Larmag 727 arrived from Amsterdam on the evening of Sept. 27 at 18:41 without passengers or cargo and left at 19:54 on Sept. 28 with 4 unregistered passengers headed for Amsterdam.

The second plane, a Gulfstream 4, registered N971L, belongs to International Lease Finance Corp. (ILFC) of Los Angeles, California. ILFC, an aircraft leasing company, was founded by Leslie Gonda, born Lazlo Goldschmied in Hungary. Today, Maurice R. Greenberg's American International Group (AIG) owns ILFC and Greenberg sits on the board of directors with Gonda.

The ILFC Gulfstream arrived at 21:56 on the 28th without passengers or cargo from Amsterdam and left at 17:13 on the 29th with 5 unregistered passengers bound for Bangor, Maine, USA.

ILFC refuses to reveal who was operating the plane in September 1994. April Rotondi in the executive office of ILFC wrote that "no one" at the company can provide any information and hung up when asked on the phone.

Anér said there was an understanding at Arlanda that invoices for the ILFC Gulfstream were to be sent to the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm. In Mayday, his book about the Estonia catastrophe, Anér wrote, "I am convinced that both these ghost planes are connected to the Estonia catastrophe."

Asked about Anér's information, Lindqvist said, "I trust the information I gave Sven Anér." Regarding the Swedish television report that a Gulfstream 5, registered to phony front companies in the U.S., was involved in the "enforced disappearance" of two Egyptians in 2001, Lindqvist said: "Through my internal sources, I know that everything in the program is correct."

SWEDISH RESISTANCE

To this day no one has been found responsible for the huge loss of life in the Estonia catastrophe.

"The government of Sweden knows the truth behind the catastrophe and is taking desperate measures to prevent the facts from coming out," Rabe said.

Uno Laur, chairman of the Swedish dominated JAIC investigation, openly stated that the official investigation was not looking to find the responsible parties for the wreck. "Nobody will be blamed," Laur said.

More than 1,200 Estonia relatives and survivors from 14 countries, seeking to find the cause of the sinking and those responsible for the death of the 852 victims, are plaintiffs in a lawsuit in a French court. This "Paris process" has lingered in a legal quagmire since it began in September 1996 due to considerable resistance and obstacles. The essence of the case has not yet been heard.

When the case opened in France, the Swedish government announced its intention to use its diplomatic influence to prevent any independent investigation of the sinking for the case in the French court.

The Swedish Maritime Administration was one of the defendants until the Swedish government was granted immunity in the Paris process.

Although the wreck lies in international waters, Sweden has issued a ban on diving to the wreck and actively lobbied other countries to join the ban. Sweden has also issued warrants for the arrest for Bemis and Rabe, for collecting evidence during their dive in 2001, charging them with disturbing the "peace of the grave."

On February 8, 2002 the Swedish supreme court announced that no legal case concerning the sinking of Estonia will ever be heard in a Swedish court.

"I feel a big disappointment that it would end like this," said Mats Wikner, a lawyer reporting for Svenska Dagbladet. "It seems like noboby wants to find the truth and now they are trying to seal it for good."