An amateur submarine maker is in custody in Copenhagen as police investigate the disappearance of a Swedish journalist who had been onboard his vessel before he is alleged to have deliberately sunk it off Denmark’s east coast.
Peter Madsen, a Danish inventor whose crowdfunded submarine Nautilus sank near Copenhagen on Friday, was arrested on preliminary manslaughter charges but has denied responsibility for the fate of 30-year-old Kim Wall.
He claims she disembarked on an island about three-and-a-half hours into their trip on Thursday night, according to Copenhagen police.
Police spokesman Jens Møller Jensen said on Sunday that the submarine had been raised from the sea bed and searched but no body had been discovered. The search for Wall in the water, from the air and on land, continues.
Møller Jensen added that there were indications that Madsen deliberately sank his submarine.
On Saturday, after a two-hour custody hearing held in private, Judge Kari Sørensen ordered that Madsen be held in pre-trial detention for 24 days while the investigation into Wall’s disappearance continued.
Prosecutor Louise Pedersen said Madsen faced a preliminary manslaughter charge “for having killed in an unknown way and in an unknown place Kim Isabell Frerika Wall of Sweden sometime after Thursday 5pm”.
Madsen’s defence lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, said her client maintains his innocence. He is “willing to cooperate” and hasn’t decided whether to appeal the detention ruling, Hald Engmark said.
Wall, a freelance journalist, had been writing about Madsen and his submarine at the time of disappearing, according to Swedish and Danish reports.
“It is with great dismay that we received the news that Kim went missing during an assignment in Denmark,” her family said.
She lives between New York and Beijing, the family said, and has written for titles including the Guardian, New York Times, South China Morning Post and Vice. Her LinkedIn page says she writes about “identity, gender, pop-culture, social justice, foreign policy and the undercurrents of rebellion”.
Madsen made headlines when he successfully financed the building of the 40-tonne, 18-metre Nautilus through crowdfunding, completing it in 2008.
He appeared on Danish television on Friday to discuss the submarine’s sinking and his rescue. Footage aired on Denmark’s TV2 channel showed him getting off what appeared to be a private boat and making a thumbs-up sign as he walked away. “I am fine, but sad because Nautilus went down,” he told TV2.
Madsen said “a minor problem with a ballast tank … turned into a major issue” that ultimately caused the sinking of the vessel, considered to be the largest privately-built submarine of its kind. The ballast tank is a compartment that holds water to provide stability.
“It took about 30 seconds for Nautilus to sink, and I couldn’t close any hatches or anything,” Madsen said. “But I guess that was pretty good because I otherwise still would have been down there.”
Swedish police said later in the day that they were investigating the whereabouts of Wall, who they said had been on the submarine at some point. “Whether the woman was on board the submarine at the time of her disappearance is unclear,” police said.
A navy spokesman, Anders Damgaard, said: “He told us that the journalist who also had been on board had been dropped off on Thursday evening. They were the only two on board yesterday.”
Authorities were alerted to issues with the voyage when Wall’s boyfriend reported her missing early on Friday. Two helicopters and three ships searched the sea from Copenhagen to the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm.
The navy initially said the craft was “found sailing” south of Copenhagen. But Damgaard later said the 40 tonne submarine had sunk.
Kristian Isbak, who had responded to the navy’s call to help locate the ship, sailed out immediately Friday and saw Madsen standing wearing his trademark military fatigues in the submarine’s tower while it was still afloat.
“He then climbed down inside the submarine and there was then some kind of air flow coming up and the submarine started to sink,” Isbak said. “[He] came up again and stayed in the tower until water came into it”, before swimming to a nearby boat as the submarine sank, he added.
Madsen “told us he had technical problems” to explain why the submarine failed to respond to radio contact, Damgaard said.
