Posted on 09/29/2013 10:54:51 PM PDT by cunning_fish
Moscow (AFP) - 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.
'I am not a pirate'
Those detained include Dmitri Litvinov, a Greenpeace spokesman and a Swedish-American dual citizen of Russian origin, Sini Saarela, a Finnish activist who tried to scale the platform, and Frank Hewetson
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
By the time the communists get through with “Greenpeace” members, they will be known as “Redpeace” members.
Putin does not smile nicely with fools.
Anyone else appreciate the irony of a bunch of watermelons doing time in the gulag?
Aw, don’t worry. What’s so bad about a couple of years in a Russian prison in Siberia? Where else can you gather a dozen different recipes for cockroach?
I’m liking the Russians more and more these days.
Never thought I’d say that in my lifetime.
Interesting times.
>>>Anyone else appreciate the irony of a bunch of watermelons doing time in the gulag?<<<
It is an infamous “useful idiot vs a jackboot” moment.
Lock em up and feed them canned tuna for 20 years.
me to
They are still lucky. The pirates trying to board the oil platform could have just been shot.
Given that the "Greenpeace" activists have been at it for many years, why has not "adult supervision" been applied sooner?
Could that be because the USA is less of a concern? Is this event an indicator of a leadership "sea change" in the international community?
Well, thank you Russians. Finally somewhere in the world where political correctness has not completely rotted the core out of a country’s will to enforce law as written.
Not like the United States where laws are “living” and apply to mostly white people but not any other race, liberal philosophy or belief.
The communists got through with Greenpeace members, that is why they are called Watermelons.
Yep, from the point of view that the Russians know from experience, exactly the real agenda, and how dangerous Watermelons are.
They should shoot every one of them.
Putin beat the Communist party in his election...
The communists infiltrating our own State Dept. tried to hijack the Russian elections for their comrades in the Communist party by funding non-profit NGOs, just like they do here at home in the USA.
The whole focus of the State Dept. for the last five years has been some kind of global gaystapo jihad... that queer punk band Pussy Riot was on the payroll and Madonna was flown in as a provocateur.
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