Two days after the Henriksson interview the Swedish Armed Forces admitted in a program of radio channel EKOT that the secret agreement between the Commissioner of Customs and the Armed Forces did exist in 1994 and was, in fact, existing up-to-day.  One day later, on 3 December 2004, the Government instructed the Supreme Court Judge Johan Hirschfeldt to investigate whether the Armed Forces and/or the Defense Material Administration (FMV) had military equipment transported on board of the “Estonia” during the month of September in 1994 and whether this equipment had been in total or partly explosive.  The investigation had to be completed by 21 January 2005 when the Report was to be submitted to the Government.  Unfortunately the extent of the investigation was rather limited and did not include a criminalistic technical examination.

Hirschfeldt presented his report as instructed and the Swedish version is attached as Enclosure 32.
The Report does not state what had been transported.  Hirschfeldt states that there are only very few documents concerning secret military transports existing and that in this particular case most of the relevant documents had been destroyed after 10 years as it were required by law.  Furthermore Hirschfeldt states that the import of defense material and the activities of intelligence services are protected by respective laws and may not be published for at least 70 years.  Another law threatens punishment to persons knowledgeable of secret activities who make same public.  Based on this law Hirschfeldt stated, that it would beimpossible for him to publish what he had found out in the course of his inquiry, unless he was prepared to face punishment which he was not.  “Our fears have been confirmed”, said Bertil Calamnius, Chairman of AgnEf, while Lars Ångström, Member of the Swedish Parliament, wrote in his letter to the Chancellor of Justice dated 12 September 2006 the following:

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The one-man investigation carried out by Johan Hirschfeldt regarding transport of military goods on Estonia supplied the information given by the Armed Forces that two shipments had been transported during the month of the Estonia sinking but that they had no responsibility for anything on board on the night of the disaster.  The directive for that investigation was however so narrowly formulated that the pertinent question never was asked: What knowledge was there within the Armed Forces/FMV regarding freight of military goods on the night of the sinking, no matter which partly was responsible for it?  This limitation was rather unfortunate in view of the fact that FMV earlier had employed private companies for transporting military equipment from the former Soviet Union.

After having completed his investigation Johan Hirschfeldt, president of the Svea Court of Appeal, destroyed his working material.  This is highly unusual, albeit legal.  In a hearing conducted in the Swedish Parliament he explained it saying that it was in accordance with his understanding of the task he had been given by the Government, i.e. the working material was to be destroyed.  Hirschfeldt also explained to the members of Parliament that he had forgotten all that dealt with the military transport which was outside his written account.  He could not say who organized the secret transports which bypassed customs and he did not remember names of responsible persons, chains of command, owners of vehicles, etc.
unquote

This means that this Report raises more questions than it answers and is, in fact, another cover up, although Minister Mona Sahlin said on 12 July 2006 in the Swedish Parliament: “It is of course so that neither I nor the debate is served by having this initiative (the Hirschfeldt Inquiry) interpreted as a way to bury the matter.  It is all about contributing to the debate with openness and transparency – not the opposite.”  A strange sense of humour does this lady have because absolutely nothing had changed in the attitude of the Swedish Governmentvis a vis those citizens affected by the foundering of the ESTONIA: They only admit what has been proven to them and destroy the evidence which might contain such evidence.