Baltic States – CIS, Estonia, Legislation

Interpol, which had ignored for a long time the application of Russian authorities to include Kross in the list of internationally wanted persons, citing the political nature of the accusations, changed unexpectedly its position last Friday and Kross' name was officially added to the list of internationally wanted persons.

The cause of Kross being wanted is cited organising piracy. It is not known yet whether Interpol received additional data from Russia about Kross's possible guilt or the organisation just changed its initial position about the political motives of the wanted application.

In theory this means that in order to avoid being arrested, Kross cannot leave Estonia. Due to the legal aid agreement between Estonia and Russia, neither state extradites their citizens to the other state.

"It is possible to transfer the investigation and Estonia has asked that from Russia but Russia hasn’t shown any readiness for that," lead state prosecutor Heili Sepp told Postimees. She said that Estonia has in the so-called Arctic Sea case conducted a thorough investigation in a common investigation group with several other states and among other things, evidence collected in Russia has been demanded from Russia. "According to the prosecutor's office evaluation, the evidence collected by now in the Estonian criminal case and the information received from Russia don't provide enough basis to suspect Kross of hijacking," said Sepp.

Kross said at a press conference on Saturday that Interpol didn’t declare him wanted, instead Russians managed to get their order, which is two years old, to be posted at the Interpol page. "Let's say that the interest to get it posted now is bigger than ever before during the two years," Kross said, explaining that the cause for this could be that him running at the local municipality elections for the post of mayor of Tallinn endangered the current Tallinn city government, ruled by the Centre Party, which has strong ties in Russia.

Russia has wanted to detain former Estonian foreign intelligence coordinator, now security adviser and businessman Eerik-Niiles Kross in connection with the hijacking of the cargo ship Arctic Sea in 2009 for years. Kross has denied any involvement in the case.