14 DAY TRIAL // It may be that President Putin does not believe that the Greenpeace activists arrested by the military towards the end of September are pirates, yet Russian authorities seem quite convinced that they are. Hence the fact that they have filed piracy charges against all of them.
By the looks of it, two of the 30 people that were aboard Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise when it was raided by armed officials and that are now accused of being pirates aren't even activists.
On the contrary, one of them is a British journalist, while the other is a Russian videographer, and they were aboard the organization's vessel only to document the Greenpeace members' protest against Russian oil company Gazprom.
Mongabay tells us that, if found guilty of piracy, the activists, the British journalist and the Russian videographer all risk being sentenced to 15 years in jail.
Commenting on the charges filed against these people, Kumi Naidoo, the current executive director of Greenpeace, said that, “Our activists have been charged with a crime that did not happen, they are accused of an imaginary offense.”
The Dutch government appears to agree with him. Thus, high officials have promised that they will try to convince Russian authorities to free the activists, the journalist and the videographer.
“The Dutch government today announced that it would initiate arbitration proceedings against Russia under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea to secure the release of 28 Greenpeace International activists, plus a freelance photographer and a freelance videographer, currently being detained in Russia on piracy charges,” Greenpeace said in a statement issued a few days ago.
Hopefully, more news on the issue will soon be shared with the public.
As reported, the people aboard Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise were arrested and held at gunpoint by Russian officials after two of them scaled an oil rig owned and operated by Russian company Gazprom.
The activists were merely protesting drilling in the Arctic, and maintain that their actions did not at any time endanger the lives of the workers aboard the oil rig.