Google – AFP, 24 Sep 2013
The Arctic
Sunrise, Greenpeace's Arctic protest ship, somewhere off
the coast of Russia on
September 17, 2013 (Greenpeace/AFP/File,
Denis Sinyakov)
|
MOSCOW —
Russia on Tuesday opened a piracy probe over a Greenpeace protest against the
Arctic oil activities of the Gazprom energy giant, saying it will prosecute all
activists involved.
Investigative
Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said a criminal probe for piracy undertaken
by an organised group had been opened over Greenpeace's September 18 protest on
a Gazprom oil rig in the Barents Sea.
"It
should be noted that all persons who attacked the (oil) platform, regardless of
their citizenship, will be brought to criminal responsibility," Markin
said in a statement.
The
Dutch-flagged Arctic Sunrise had been monitoring the exploration activities of
Gazprom since August in the hope of exposing the dangers of drilling for oil in
one of the world's great nature reserves.
A Russian
Coast Guard officer points a
knife at a Greenpeace activist (L)
in the Pechora
Sea, September 18, 2013
(Greenpeace/AFP, Denis Sinyakov)
|
The two
were detained after Russian navy patrol boats opened warning shots at the ship.
They and the entire crew were later placed under arrest and locked up in the
Arctic Sunrise's mess.
The group
says the Russian action was illegal because the Arctic Sunrise was in
international waters at the time of the raid.
But Markin
argued that the Greenpeace ship was located "in the exclusive economic
zone of the Russian Federation" when it was boarded by agents from
Russia's Federal Security Service (the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB).
It was not
immediately clear from Markin's comments whether the investigation had been
launched against just the two activists who had attempted to scale the platform
or all activists on board the ship.
The Arctic Sunrise was approaching the shoreline of Russia's Far Northern city of Murmansk on Tuesday after being tugged from the scene of the action by a Russian border guards boat.
The Arctic Sunrise was approaching the shoreline of Russia's Far Northern city of Murmansk on Tuesday after being tugged from the scene of the action by a Russian border guards boat.
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