Swedish hunt for submarine descends into farce [View all]

[jakeXT]

Finding a submarine was “like (looking for) Jesus”, Swedish Rear Admiral Anders Grenstad said this week. “Everyone knows who he is, but no one has seen him.”

The Swedish military spent seven days searching the waters around the 30,000 islands of the Stockholm archipelago. But on Friday morning, they finally called off the hunt for a supposed foreign submarine in an operation that has been tinged with farce throughout.


A picture of a mysterious black-clad individual – reported by some media as possibly being a Russian spetsnaz special forces soldier – turned out to be Ove, a local fisherman. A story by Swedish tabloid Expressen on “heavily armed troops” involved in the search was illustrated by a picture that was actually a boat full of reporters from Dagens Nyheter.

Sverker Göransson, supreme commander of Sweden’s armed forces, also raised eyebrows with his choice of language when discussing the case. “This is very serious. It is plainly and simply fucked up that something or someone is inside Swedish territory right now,” he said on Tuesday.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9bd892c2-5b7c-11e4-b68a-00144feab7de.html