“All hypotheses are considered”: an investigation opened after a suspicious incident on board a Belgian navy ship

Belgian justice announced this Friday, February 6, the opening of an investigation to determine the causes of damage to a minehunter which was deemed suspicious by the Minister of Defense, after sabotage attempts on German naval vessels.

“Technical investigations are underway, all hypotheses are being considered,” a spokesperson for the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office, now in charge of the judicial aspect of the investigation, told AFP.

No fire or injuries

The incident occurred on Tuesday evening at the Zeebrugge naval base aboard the minehunter Oostende, where overheating of a component of the exhaust system caused smoke to escape.

There was no fire or injuries, but the firefighters had to be called on board to cool the installation, according to Defense, which also announced for its part that it was carrying out “a technical investigation”.

Questioned by deputies in the House the day after the incident, Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken made the link with the events that recently occurred in the port of Hamburg, Germany.

“We have already seen this in Germany, where it was acts of sabotage,” said Theo Francken, who considered the incident on the Belgian ship “striking”.

Too early to talk about sabotage

Two men were arrested this week, a Romanian arrested in Hamburg and a Greek in his country, suspected of having attempted to sabotage German naval ships. The facts date from last year when they were working on these boats then present on a shipyard in Hamburg. Their motivations have not been clarified at this stage.

On Friday, the spokesperson for the Belgian prosecutor’s office stressed that it was too early to talk about suspicions of sabotage in Zeebrugge. The technical investigations must last several days to obtain the first elements of an explanation, according to her.

Germany and other NATO members in Europe are on alert over the increase in the number of acts of espionage and sabotage behind which they see the hand of Russia.