A Finnish prosecutor has sent four of his countrymen to court on charges of smuggling large amounts of drugs into the country from Estonia. According to the indictment, the men are accused of smuggling some 6.5 kilograms of amphetamines into Finland from Estonia between last January and August. The value of the drugs is estimated to be about 260,000 euros. The leader of the drug smugglers' gang allegedly bought amphetamine on three occasions in Estonia and brought the substances to Finland in three batches. Finnish customs officers caught some of the drugs and the man managed to sell about one kilogram of amphetamine before being caught. The other members of the gang helped to transport the drugs and mediate the sale.
An oil tanker sailing under the flag of the Isle of Man ran aground in the vicinity of Miiduranna Port, but the ship did not spring a leak and there was no danger of pollution. The Oderstern, which carried oil products, veered from its course in the entry channel on Jan. 10 and was stuck on the edge of the channel. There was a pilot on board the ship at the moment of the accident. The ship was pulled off from the reef at 3:42 p.m. upon which the vessel landed under its own steam at Miiduranna Port. The Estonian Maritime Administration will inform the Maritime Administraton of the Isle of Man of the accident and agree on the maritime accident investigator who must establish all the causes of the accident.
An unidentified criminal has aimed a green laser beam at aircraft taking off from and landing at Tallinn airport in the fall of 2008, the daily Ohtuleht reported. A powerful laser beam could leave the pilot blind and cause an aviation disaster, the newspaper reported. The beam was recorded for the first time by the crew of a landing aircraft at around 7 p.m. on Sept. 15. The plane landed successfully and a report was immediately filed by the pilots. The report was confirmed by the crew of a second aircraft that had noticed the beam a few minutes earlier. It is believed that the perpetrator may have kept the device in his car and used it from different locations. There are no legal restrictions in Estonia as to the capacity of lasers that individuals can obtain for private use, nor is there any law regulating the use of lasers.
The state-owned postal company Eesti Post announced on Jan. 10 that it will step up the security at post offices in the wake of the robbery of a post office in the village of Aaspere days before. "As regards the robbery of cash from the post office we must definitely first complete in-house procedures and wait until the outcome of the investigation conducted by the police, which will provide us with an overview of what happened," CEO Ahti Kallaste told the Baltic News Service. Kallaste added that crime rates have gone up significantly as a result of the economic decline.
