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Sweden shuns joint investigation of Nord Streams emergency

Such an investigation Swedish Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said, would have included legal agreements requiring Sweden to share information it considered confidential

LONDON, October 15. /TASS/. Sweden has rejected a proposal by the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) to set up a joint investigation team to investigate the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines emergency because of the confidentiality of information, Swedish Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said in an interview with Reuters on Friday.

Such an investigation, he said, would have included legal agreements requiring Sweden to share information it considered confidential. "This is because there is information in our investigation that is subject to confidentiality directly linked to national security," Jungqvist said.

Earlier, Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, citing sources, reported that Sweden did not want to share with Germany and Denmark the results of the Nord Stream pipeline emergency investigation because of the high level of secrecy.

Four leaks were discovered last week on the Nord Stream gas link, with the most recent one pinpointed by Sweden’s coast guard. Earlier, the Nord Stream AG company reported that three threads of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 offshore gas pipelines had suffered unprecedented damage on September 27. Swedish seismologists later revealed that two explosions had been recorded along the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26. The Danish Energy Agency reported that a large amount of gas had spilled into the sea. After that, investigators of Russia’s Federal Security Service initiated a criminal case on an act of international terrorism in connection with the explosions.

On October 3, the Swedish prosecutor's office stated that the area where the gas pipelines were leaking should be closed for inspection of the crime scene. Ljungqvist did not disclose details of the preliminary investigation. On October 6, Swedish Security Police and Ljungqvist reported that the crime scene inspection was complete. The prosecutor's office also explained that evidence had been taken from the crime scene and the investigation was continuing.