BERLIN (CONVERSEER) – A Polish court on Friday denied the extradition of a Ukrainian suspect to Germany in a case involving the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines three years ago, the PAP news agency reported.
The suspect identified as Volodymyr Z was wanted by Germany under a European arrest warrant. He was arrested in late September in Pruszków near Warsaw and has been in custody since.
According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in the German city of Karlsruhe, the 46-year-old is a trained diver who was allegedly a member of the group that placed explosive devices on the Nord Stream gas pipelines near the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm in September 2022.
The prosecutor’s office accuses him of causing an explosive detonation and anti-constitutional sabotage.
The explosions in the attack damaged the two pipelines so severely that no gas could be transported through them. The explosions were registered near Denmark’s Bornholm. Shortly afterwards, four leaks were discovered in three of the total four pipelines.
Previously, Russian natural gas flowed through Nord Stream 1 to Germany, although not at the time of the attack. Nord Stream 2 was not yet operational due to the Russian war against Ukraine.
(dpa)
