By Anna Koper
WARSAW (Reuters) -A Polish court ruled on Wednesday that a Ukrainian diver, wanted by Berlin over his alleged involvement in explosions which damaged the Nord Stream gas pipeline, must be kept in custody while a decision is made on whether to transfer him to Germany.
Described by both Moscow and the West as an act of sabotage, the explosions marked an escalation in the Ukraine conflict and squeezed energy supplies on the continent. No one has taken responsibility for the blasts and Ukraine has denied any role.
Volodymyr Z. was detained near Warsaw on Tuesday. He will now be kept in custody for seven days.
His lawyer Tymoteusz Paprocki told reporters he would appeal against the decision. “If somebody lives in a given country for three-and-a-half years then in my opinion saying that there is a risk of escape… is not convincing,” he said.
Germany’s top prosecutors’ office said on Tuesday Polish police had acted upon a European arrest warrant that it had issued.
Its statement said the diver was one of a group of people who were suspected of renting a sailing yacht in the German Baltic Sea port of Rostock and planting explosives on the pipelines, which run from Russia to Germany, near the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022.
He faces accusations of conspiring to commit an explosives attack and of “anti-constitutional sabotage”, the German prosecutors added.
In August, Italian police arrested a Ukrainian man suspected of coordinating the attacks. That man, identified only as Serhii K., plans to take his fight against extradition to Italy’s highest court after a lower court ordered his transfer to Germany, his legal team said.
(Reporting by Anna Koper, additional reporting by Pawel Florkiewicz and Ludwig Burger, writing by Alan Charlish, Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Ros Russell)
