A Russian court on Sunday ordered the detention for two months of eight more crew members of a Greenpeace ship who protested against Arctic oil drilling as part of a probe into alleged piracy.
A Russian court on Sunday ordered the detention for two months of eight
more crew members of a Greenpeace ship who protested against Arctic oil
drilling as part of a probe into alleged piracy.
The Lenin district court in the northern city of
Murmansk
on
Thursday had already ordered the detention of 22 other Greenpeace activists for
two months, pending the investigation into suspected piracy after a protest at
a Gazprom oil rig on September 18.
With the court's decision on Sunday, all 30 members of the Arctic Sunrise
icebreaker crew will remain in custody until November 24.
Among their total are six British citizens, four Russians and nationals from 16
other countries including
Argentina
,
Italy
,
France
and
Australia
.
Reacting to the news of the detentions, Kumi Naidoo, executive director of
Greenpeace International, said in a statement that the court's decision was a
"blatant attempt to intimidate anyone preventing an oil rush in the
Arctic
."
Diplomats from several countries attended the hearings.
Russian investigators have accused the activists of piracy after two tried to
scale state energy giant Gazprom's Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the
Barents
Sea
.
The group has denied committing piracy and accuses
Russia
of
illegally boarding its ship in international waters.
President
Vladimir
Putin
has said that the activists "are of course not pirates" but stressed
they had broken international law by getting dangerously close to the oil rig.
Charges of piracy carry a maximum prison term of 15 years but the Investigative
Committee said the charge against the group could be reduced in the course of
the probe.
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