On Friday afternoon, the Swedish Coast Guard, along with the police's special operations unit, boarded a cargo ship off Trelleborg. The vessel Caffa is suspected of being stateless and appears on Ukraine's sanctions list. A preliminary investigation has been initiated for suspected breach of maritime law.
At 3:50 p.m. on Friday, the operation began against the Guinean-flagged cargo ship Caffa, suspected of being stateless. The vessel, a bulk carrier loaded with grain, was en route from Casablanca in Morocco to St. Petersburg in Russia. According to the Coast Guard's press chief Mattias Lindholm, the agency has information indicating the ship is not in Guinea's vessel register and needs verification. 'We have been following the vessel for some time and have information about unclear flag status, which leads us to suspect it is stateless,' Lindholm says.
The operation, named Svart kaffe, was carried out with support from the police's national special operations unit and a helicopter on Swedish territorial waters a few kilometers south of Trelleborg. The ship is 96 meters long and 13 meters wide. It has visited Russian ports in the past five years and switched from a Russian to a Guinean flag this summer.
Civil defense minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin (M) writes on X that the vessel is on Ukraine's sanctions list. 'The ownership structure is unclear and there is suspicion that insurance is lacking. As recently as this summer, the ship is said to have switched from a Russian to a Guinean flag,' he states.
The Coast Guard has initiated a preliminary investigation into suspected breach of the maritime law regarding unseaworthiness. 'Vessels with this type of deficiencies pose a danger to other maritime traffic and the environment,' Lindholm says. By 9 p.m. on Friday evening, the investigation continued onboard with searches, interviews, and information gathering. A press conference is scheduled for Saturday at 2 p.m. This is the second time in a few months that Swedish authorities have boarded a vessel in Skåne waters; in December, the Russian ship Adler was boarded north of Höganäs.
