Clare Daly says ‘jaw-dropping’ EU not investigating US links to Norway gas explosion

The Irish European Parliament member slammed the EU's "frankly astounding" "lack of interest" in finding answers to the incident in a recent meeting of the bloc's legislature.

Taking to the podium alongside fellow MEP Mick Wallace, Daly declared that the explosion was “an act of sabotage, an act of unrivaled vandalism, economically and environmentally”.

“And not a word, no discussion, no questions,” she added.

“Then along comes Seymour Hersh the world's most acclaimed distinguished living investigative journalist (and) he produces a detailed claim that the United States executed this explosion with the help of Norway.”

She then reiterated some of the claims made by Hersh, including that it was planned months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine,

“A Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane dropped a sonar buoy on the 26th of September which triggered explosions planted by US Navy Panama City divers three months earlier under a NATO exercise and still nothing,” she stated.

“I don't know what happened but I want to know. This is a man who doesn't make claims lightly, a man with contacts. I find it frankly jaw-dropping that the EU is not asking questions as to who is responsible for sabotaging the livelihoods of our citizens. I am ashamed to be a European.”

Earlier this month, Hersh wrote on Substack that the US was involved in the sabotage of the pipelines.

Hersh is a Pulitzer-winning journalist best known for his expose of the 1968 My Lai Massacre committed by US troops in Vietnam and the Pentagon’s efforts to cover it up.

In 2004, he chronicled the military’s torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

However, National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby, denied that the US sabotaged pipelines, saying it’s a “completely false story”.

There is no truth it," Kirby said when asked about Hersh’s claims.

“Not a shred of it. It is not true. The United States, and no proxies of the United States had anything to do with that, nothing.”

US and European officials suggested at the time that Russia may have been responsible for explosions in September that caused leaks.

Nord Stream I and its finished-but-still-unused companion, Nord Stream II, are a set of natural gas pipes that connect Russia with Germany under the Baltic Sea.

Russia, which invaded Ukraine a year ago this week, has relied on its income from energy exports to fund the war. President Joe Biden sanctioned the Russian company behind the pipelines last year.