BERLIN, July 3 -- The man German prosecutors say commanded the yacht that destroyed two natural gas pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea was photographed being escorted from a Hamburg prison facility last November. He says he was not there.

On Wednesday, Germany's Federal Prosecutor General Jens Rommel filed the first formal indictment in the Nord Stream sabotage case, charging Serhii K., identified in European arrest warrant documents as Serhii Kuznietsov, a 50-year-old Ukrainian national, with attacks on civilian energy infrastructure, causing an explosion, and destruction of built structures. The charges mark the first time any suspect has been formally accused in a case that has held Europe's legal and intelligence establishments in an a...