The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[Vixen]

What does "vanished shortly after being rescued" mean? And what is your source for this? According to the JAIC report, all 138 of the initial survivors were admitted to hospitals upon arrival on shore. All the surviving crew members, and all but a handful of passengers, were subsequently interviewed by authorities. At what point did these nine disappear?

Citation please that 'all but a handful of passengers were 'subsequently interviewed by authorities'? This sounds very grand but quite a few survivors complain they had a quick phone call and then heard nothing again. Paul Barney and Sara Hedrenius, claim they have never been contacted at all.

The wife of Avo Piht, Sirje, said she had been phoned from Rostock (a port in East Germany) that her husband was a survivor. He also appears on a survivors list. He was also seen by some, who may of course have been mistaken, on a German TV news clip getting off an ambulance at a hospital in Finland AND there was an Interpol Warrant of Arrest out for him.

September 1996 seven Estonian women wrote a letter to Göran Persson, Swedish prime minister after Ingvar Carlsson and Carl Bildt. It was received 30 September 1996 and handed over to the Swedish Ministry of Communications and registered 1 October with Dnr. K96/3359/2. The seven women were Sirje Piht (wife of Avo Piht), Kairi Lembit (wife of Lembit Leiger), Illu Erma (wife of Viktor Bogdanov), Aino Veide (mother of Hannely and Hanka-Hannika Veide), Merle Pajula (life companion of Agur Tormagas), Viive Kikas (mother of Kaimar Kikas) and Urve Beek (mother of Tiina Müür). They issued a notification that they were not convinced that their eight relatives had died. 17 October 1996 the Ministry replied (Dnr. K96/3559/2) that it had asked Swedish Police to look into the matter. They received no reply. As Göran Persson did not inform the JAIC about the matter, it was not mentioned in the Final report and did not pursue it. The report gives the number of survivors (137) and those found dead in the water (about 92 [numbers vary slightly according to source]) but doesn't give a list of names.



Lembit was the chief engineer and Bogdanov the chief medical officer.



One reason for the lack of confidence is the Estonian claim that the Swedish secret police swooped on the survivors rescued by Mariella and Silja Symphony and effectively put them into custody - locking them away from other passengers and demanding to know who they wanted to ring, together with said ID. They were also - they claim - escorted off the ship in Stockholm before being led into isolated wards and locked away, with the Estonian Embassy frantically trying to contact them.

The mother of the twins, who were ship entertainers, claims her daughters, rang her at least three times after the accident but the call was interrupted each time. The father said he had a phonecall from someone saying his daughters had been seen. The father investigated the caller and went to his address, I believe, in Stockholm, to confront him and find out more. However, when he arrived no-one was there and a neighbour approached him to tell him never to come back.

The whole thing seems to have been one big mess.

Surely wrong to give false hope to the many relatives.

 

[Vixen]

Can you cite to another forensic engineering report where this practice was followed?



You cite this as an example, but then you simply apply a lot of hypotheticals that aren't actually addressed.



As for Enron, you didn't answer my questions. Am I qualified to question the investigations into the Enron and Arthur Anderson malfeasance, having no training or qualification in forensic accounting?

Yes, of course you are. A good report (for the purpose of a public inquiry) should be written in plain simple English so that even an intelligent 12-year-old can grasps the points being made.

If you were at all involved in the Enron company or a victim of it, then of course, your evidence should be put forward. If you discover the points you thought important have been left out, why shouldn't you challenge it?

 

[Vixen]

That doesn't address my objection. All professions have a responsibility to act ethically. But what that means in terms of each profession is a matter of the specific best practices and longstanding conventions in each profession. Do you claim that your experience as a forensic accountant qualifies you to determine what is ethical practice for engineering?



Engineering is a rigorous, licensed profession requiring years of education and apprenticeship. Are you claiming that your uninformed "common sense" is of commensurate value?

You claim that some people are able to determine a fake forensic engineering report from a real one. Are you claiming to be such a person? Are you claiming your critics cannot? I've asked this question a number of times, and I don't see where you've answered it.



That wasn't my question. Do you claim to be an expert in eyewitness testimony?



Are you familiar with the scholarship of Dr. Elizabeth Loftus?



Then what qualifies you to determine what the law considers appropriate to an investigation? You seem to want your "common sense" to substitute for expert knowledge and judgment in a number of professions in which you cannot document any significant training or experience. Do you think this should be common practice?

I actually did my dissertation on memory. Of course a report written for the industry will be in highly technical industry jargon. What we are discussing here is a public inquiry, not some conveyancing or surveying report.

 

[Vixen]

I’m not seeing your point here. The suggestion was that the crew’s behavior was somehow suspicious and indicative of foreknowledge of the accident. What you describe here sounds like people scrambling to react to an emergency in real time. That doesn’t suggest foreknowledge to me, just resourcefulness.



The crew knew their own ship better than the passengers. So what?




Sounds like they got lucky. The Mariella rescued a total of twelve people from that lifeboat. Since you only mention nine crew, I guess that means the other three were passengers. Did those three passengers have foreknowledge, too?



I'll ask again what this actually means, and what your source for this is. According to the JAIC, all the survivors were admitted to hospitals on shore, and all of the crew were subsequently interviewed by authorities.



Witnesses sometimes remember things differently from the way they actually happened. So what?



Is there something important we're being asked to take Silver Linde's word on? Otherwise, how is this relevant? How is it anything other than evil gossip?



This is not a given at all; it is very much in the realm of gossip. And yes, that goes for your bloke saying he’s retired MI6 and knew all about it.

Erm, the fact is recorded in the Swedish Riksdag's parliamentary records. It is an absolute and indisputable legal fact that the Swedish government has confirmed it did indeed transport military secrets belonging to Russia on the Estonia. It admits to at least two occasions within a fortnight of the accident. Why do you keep trying to claim it is 'evil' (whatever that is) gossip?

Evil towards whom?

Gossip in which way? When it is as definite as an Executive Order signed off by your senate.

It is set in stone and is therefore, not gossip.

 

[JayUtah]

Yes, of course you are. A good report (for the purpose of a public inquiry) should be written...

I asked you cite to a forensic engineering report that has been written so as to preclude challenges even from a naive reader. Why did you not comply?

...in plain simple English so that even an intelligent 12-year-old can grasps the points being made.

That may suffice for accounting, but forensic engineering is beyond the grasp of most 12-year-olds. In any case, the question is not the simplicity of the language employed in the report. but whether the report precludes challenges by non-experts. I am not interested in how you think such a report should be written, since you have disclaimed expertise in the fields in question. I am asking you to show me examples of other reports in the relevant fields that are written to the standards you indicate should be employed. If you cannot do so, then I must conclude your prescription is naive.

If you were at all involved in the Enron company or a victim of it, then of course, your evidence should be put forward. If you discover the points you thought important have been left out, why shouldn't you challenge it?

I don't claim to be a victim of the Enron issue. I asked whether I, in the capacity of a non-expert in forensic accounting or corporate finance, would be considered qualified to challenge the report of expert forensic accounts that identified their misdeeds. Please answer the questions I ask, not some other question.

 

[Vixen]

I asked you cite to a forensic engineering report that has been written so as to preclude challenges even from a naive reader. Why did you not comply?



That may suffice for accounting, but forensic engineering is beyond the grasp of most 12-year-olds. In any case, the question is not the simplicity of the language employed in the report. but whether the report precludes challenges by non-experts. I am not interested in how you think such a report should be written, since you have disclaimed expertise in the fields in question. I am asking you to show me examples of other reports in the relevant fields that are written to the standards you indicate should be employed. If you cannot do so, then I must conclude your prescription is naive.



I don't claim to be a victim of the Enron issue. I asked whether I, in the capacity of a non-expert in forensic accounting or corporate finance, would be considered qualified to challenge the report of expert forensic accounts that identified their misdeeds. Please answer the questions I ask, not some other question.

Of course you would be qualified to challenge a forensic accounting report. As a recent example, the Post Office scandal, where hundreds of subpostmasters were convicted of fraud and some were jailed. As a result of a challenge to the Post Office, who had the computer system experts on their side, together with top government barristers, they managed to get all of this stuff overturned, because do you know what? The computer system providers, Horizon, LIED about the efficiency of their hardware and software, claiming it was not possible for it to have being flat out WRONG and therefore, all of these decent hardworking upright men and women must have been EMBEZZLERS. So of course the 'little man in the street' can challenge any report it considers inaccurate or unfair, or both.

 

[JayUtah]

I actually did my dissertation on memory.

Please cite the title, year, and institution, if you are claiming thereby to be an expert in eyewitness testimony. Then also please summarize for the thread the work of Dr. Loftus as it regards memory and eyewitness testimony.

Of course a report written for the industry will be in highly technical industry jargon. What we are discussing here is a public inquiry, not some conveyancing or surveying report.

I mentioned nothing about "conveyancing or surveying reports."

"Jargon" is a derogatory term for the specialized, standardized vocabularies used by various professions to precisely and unambiguously describe concepts that pertain to the profession. A public inquiry is simply one that is undertaken pursuant to a public mandate. The findings are not expected to be comprehensible to members of the public who are not well versed in the topics the inquiry discusses.

You disclaim that you are no lawyer. Therefore I asked by what authority you profess to determine what the law finds acceptable in the understanding of an issue under investigation. You did not answer.

You claim that certain people know when a forensic engineering report is fake. I asked you if you are claiming that ability, and whether you further claim that your critics lack that same ability. Your persistent refusal to answer that question leads me to conclude that a truthful answer from you to that question would undermine the insinuation that you originally proposed, and -- further -- that you are not arguing in good faith.

Again, you seem to be arguing that your "common sense" should compensate for your failure of expertise in various specialized fields, and that practitioners in those fields, when acting according to a public mandate, should produce work that is compressible and impervious to challenge by even the least competent member of the public. Is this not simply a ploy for you to set yourself up as some sort of authority in topics you have not studied, and over people who know more than you about it?

 

[JayUtah]

Of course you would be qualified to challenge a forensic accounting report.

And if my challenges were simply naive because I didn't understand the laws and practices in question, to what extent would they be considered operative?

The computer system providers, Horizon, LIED about the efficiency of their hardware and software...

And the problems that provided the proof of that were identified by postmasters, who are subject-matter experts. That doesn't indicate that any bloke on the street would have arrived at a similar conclusion or have had the wherewithal to challenge the company's products. And in contrast, the findings that eventually led to a relevant judgment at law were supported by discovery of internal documentation, which in turn were solicited by IT specialists. You're citing cases where subject-matter experts challenged the claims of other such experts, not cases in which the general public provided the key challenges.

 

[Vixen]

Please cite the title, year, and institution, if you are claiming thereby to be an expert in eyewitness testimony. Then also please summarize for the thread the work of Dr. Loftus as it regards memory and eyewitness testimony.



I mentioned nothing about "conveyancing or surveying reports."

"Jargon" is a derogatory term for the specialized, standardized vocabularies used by various professions to precisely and unambiguously describe concepts that pertain to the profession. A public inquiry is simply one that is undertaken pursuant to a public mandate. The findings are not expected to be comprehensible to members of the public who are not well versed in the topics the inquiry discusses.

You disclaim that you are no lawyer. Therefore I asked by what authority you profess to determine what the law finds acceptable in the understanding of an issue under investigation. You did not answer.

You claim that certain people know when a forensic engineering report is fake. I asked you if you are claiming that ability, and whether you further claim that your critics lack that same ability. Your persistent refusal to answer that question leads me to conclude that a truthful answer from you to that question would undermine the insinuation that you originally proposed, and -- further -- that you are not arguing in good faith.

Again, you seem to be arguing that your "common sense" should compensate for your failure of expertise in various specialized fields, and that practitioners in those fields, when acting according to a public mandate, should produce work that is compressible and impervious to challenge by even the least competent member of the public. Is this not simply a ploy for you to set yourself up as some sort of authority in topics you have not studied, and over people who know more than you about it?

Send a PM and I might consider it.

You fail to understand it is not me who has brought about the investigation. I don't have to produce anything.

 

[Vixen]

No one in this thread has claimed that sinking is not being reinvestigated, therefore no one is saying that "the news of the M/S Estoniia being reinvestigated is 'fake news'".

While several posters have opined that this thread should be moved to a different subforum (and i am inclined to agree), if any have called for it to be closed I missed that.

Why have a go at me. I put this thread in Current and Social Affairs BECAUSE IT IS IN THE NEWS.


In future address the correct person.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Unfortunately, the Estonia sank so rapidly there was no time to launch the life boats, except for some of the lucky crew (or maybe not so lucky after all). The life boats that were found were mostly upside down bobbing about in the sea.

Your point being?

At least one boat would be ready to be launched at short notice and would have had a crew trained to do this in case of a sinking. It's job would be to try and round up liferafts.
Lifeboats are on both sides of a ship, they are also designed to float free if the ship sinks.
Liferafts similarly are designed to float free and self inflate in submerged.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Why would you think it strange that the crew of a ship would know the best roue to take to get above decks in an emergency?

 

[junkshop]

Why have a go at me. I put this thread in Current and Social Affairs BECAUSE IT IS IN THE NEWS.


In future address the correct person.

I did.

 

[Andy_Ross]

One would have thought that on a passenger ferry, the children, women and passengers should be rescued first, and that didn't happen.

the crew don't seem to have been very good.

But 'women and children first' is a myth.

you fill the boats and rafts as quickly as you can with as many people as you can.

'Women and children first' resulted in some cases with boats from the Titanic leaving the ship almost empty while men were held back from boarding them.

 

[Steve]

So you keep saying but you haven't advanced any rationale for why it should not be reopened or even discussed on a forum.

Correct. I have not. It matters not to me that the investigation has been reopened. And I too am discussing it on a forum.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Exactly. Something like a flooded car deck should be quite easy to deal with. Slow down, turn the ship around away from the waves and release the water naturally. Job done.

But...if there is a hole in the hull....


Remember, these cruise liners sail every day of the year, every year and know about car decks.

Why should a flooding car deck be easy to deal with?

What training in dealing with flooding do you think merchant crews have?

 

[Andy_Ross]

I said some people think it suspicious because on a passenger ship the crew are supposed to see to the safety of passengers above all else. As the main witnesses to the event (the passengers were not heard, with their anonymised accounts generalised into a few paragraphs without names) of course the crew will be eager to emphasise everything they did for the passengers. Some did hand out life jackets, others launched life rafts. However, how did a lifeboat containing nine crew members manage to get rescued, whilst the passengers were left to the fate of the sea.

This is a reasonable question IMV.

The Empress of Ireland was in 1905, and in relatively early days in the marine passenger industry. Without wishing to be cynical, maybe the crew understandably each had their own survival instinct kicking in and that is where they had the advantage over the passengers.

Why do you think the behaviour of a crew today would be any different?
Look at any sinking, the crew survive in far higher proportion than the passengers.

 

[Andy_Ross]

I do find it odd that nine crew members could vanish shortly after being rescued. The Treaty of Rome 1988 and as signed by Sweden itself prohibits the 'disappearance' of people. Yet disappear they did. Or seem to have done.

Do you think someone 'disappeared' them?

Were they saboteurs? witnesses? spies?

Have they been murdered?

What exactly are you claiming?

 

[Steve]

Do you think someone 'disappeared' them?

Were they saboteurs? witnesses? spies?

Have they been murdered?

What exactly are you claiming?

Considering our source, I don't believe that anyone "vanished after being rescued".

And I note again that this particular untrustworthy source has repeatedly asserted upthread that they are not claiming there is a conspiracy.

Notice how Vixen's claims always begin with "some people think"? Carefully avoiding any claims or original thoughts that could be directly attributed to Vixen.

 

[Vixen]

Why would you think it strange that the crew of a ship would know the best roue to take to get above decks in an emergency?

Nothing strange about that. However with 58 of the survivors making up the 137 (excluding the missing nine crew, if they are missing). 42% when they make up circa ten percent of the total number of people on board it is pretty top heavy and you can understand why some people feel resentful about it.