MURMANSK/MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti) – A court in Russia’s Arctic port city of Murmansk continued to reject bail appeals on Monday from Greenpeace activists detained last month on piracy charges, ruling that Argentinean national Camila Speziale should stay behind bars pending trial.
The court is also hearing appeals Monday from Italian national Cristian D’Alessandro and US citizen Peter Willcox, who captained the Greenpeace icebreaker seized by border guards in September in the Russian Arctic.
Appeals from six of the other detainees – four Russians and two British nationals – were rejected last week, with the court ordering the Greenpeace activists to remain in custody until a hearing on November 24.
On September 18, several environmental activists launched inflatable boats from the Arctic Sunrise icebreaker and tried to scale an oil rig operated by an affiliate of Russian state-run energy giant Gazprom in the Pechora Sea, in a protest against what they say is the potentially devastating impact of offshore drilling on the Arctic environment.
In response, Russian authorities seized the Arctic Sunrise and towed it to Murmansk, where all 30 people on board were charged with piracy, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and put in pretrial detention.
The “Arctic 30,” as Greenpeace has christened the group, includes 28 activists, one freelance photographer and one freelance videographer. All have appealed their detention, seeking release on bail or home arrest.
So far, the ship’s doctor Yekaterina Zaspa, Greenpeace spokesman Andrei Allakhverdov and activist Roman Dolgov – all Russian nationals – as well as British activist Phil Ball, British freelance videographer Kieron Bryan and Russian freelance photographer Denis Sinyakov have been denied bail.
The Russian authorities have hinted that the detainees may still be hit with additional drug charges, claiming that they found opiates on board the Arctic Sunrise. Greenpeace slammed the allegations as exaggerated, saying that Russia must be referring to “medical supplies that our ships are obliged to carry under maritime law.”
Court debates during the detainees’ appeal hearings have focused on the activists’ intentions – whether or not they intended to seize the Prirazlomnoye platform – as well as whether or not the oil rig counts as a ship. Under international maritime law, piracy is considered an attack specifically against a ship or aircraft.
A human rights advisor to the Kremlin, Mikhail Fedotov, has called for Russia to drop the piracy charges. He said last week that the activists clearly didn’t intend to forcibly seize the platform and asserted the accusation is tantamount to accusing them of gang-raping the oil rig.
Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged publicly that the detainees were not pirates, but said they had violated international law by attempting to scale the rig and that the authorities had acted legitimately out of security concerns.
With 18 nationalities represented among the Greenpeace detainees, the case has drawn global attention.
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff last week promised all assistance necessary to free Brazilian activist Ana Paula Maciel, and the Netherlands has launched legal action to free the Arctic Sunrise – which sails under a Dutch flag – and its crew, promising to take the case to international court if they are not released.
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