MOSCOW, September 26 (RIA Novosti) – A court in northern Russia has put under arrest a prominent photographer who accompanied a group of Greenpeace activists during a protest against oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean, as well as one of the activists themselves, Greenpeace said Thursday.
The court in Murmansk ruled that Denis Sinyakov, a former photographer for Reuters news agency, can be kept in detention until November 24, according to Greenpeace. Activist Roman Dolgov was also placed under arrest for two months, Greenpeace said.
Investigators said in a statement Thursday that they have requested the arrest of all the 30 people who were detained when Russian border guards stormed the Greenpeace icebreaker Arctic Sunrise at gunpoint on September 19. The crew are now under investigation for piracy. No charges have yet been brought in the case.
Court decisions on the other 28 activists, who are nationals of 19 different countries, are expected to continue throughout the day.
“You can see my photographs in Russian and international news media. All my cameras have been confiscated,” Sinyakov, who Greenpeace says was contracted by the organization to photograph the protest, said at the court hearing before his arrest was announced, Greenpeace said in a tweet. “My criminal activity is journalism. I will continue to report.”
The activists, who face up to 15 years in prison on the piracy charges, were detained after two of them scaled the side of the Prirazlomnaya oil rig, owned by an oil subsidiary of Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom, in the Pechora Sea during a demonstration against Arctic oil drilling. The activists maintain that their protest was peaceful.
Kumi Naidoo, the head of Greenpeace International, said in a statement about the first court rulings that the Russian authorities were trying to scare people who oppose oil production in the Arctic, and that it would not work.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that the actions of the Greenpeace activists clearly did not amount to piracy, but that they had broken the law.
“It’s completely obvious that they breached international law by coming within dangerous proximity of the oil rig. There was a threat to people’s lives,” Putin told a conference dedicated to Arctic issues.
Prominent Russian journalists and photographers said they would attend a protest against Sinyakov’s arrest outside Russia’s Investigative Committee headquarters in Moscow at 5 p.m. on Thursday.
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