Russia Accuses Greenpeace Activists of Piracy
By ANDREW E. KRAMER // Published: October 2, 2013
MOSCOW — Russian prosecutors have filed charges of piracy against at
least five members of the crew of a Greenpeace ship and accompanying
journalists in an arraignment on Wednesday.
The charges carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
While all 30 people aboard a Greenpeace International ship seized last
month by the Russian Coast Guard have been investigated for piracy, it
is unclear how many will be charged.
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Greenpeace posted a notice on its Web site that a crew member, Ana Paula
Alminhana Maciel of Brazil, and a videographer, Kieron Bryan of
Britain, had been charged with piracy.
The site said defense lawyers in Russia expected two others, Sini
Saarela of Finland and Dima Litvinov of Sweden, to be charged with
piracy. Interfax, the Russian news agency, reported that a spokesman for
Greenpeace in Russia, Roman Dolgov, faced the same charge.
Though Greenpeace activists have run afoul of authorities in many
countries over the years, the conservation group has called the crisis
in Russia its most serious since the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior off
New Zealand in 1985.
“We believe the charges are absolutely unfounded and illegal,” said
Mikhail Kreindlin, a lawyer representing Greenpeace at the hearing
Wednesday in the port city of Murmansk, according to Interfax. “Our
activists had no motive for taking possession of anyone’s property.
There was no crime.”
Russian prosecutors had foreshadowed their intentions to file piracy
charges soon after the Coast Guard seized the ship, the Arctic Sunrise,
after it released inflatable boats with activists who tried to board an
oil platform in the Arctic.
Yet the filing came as a surprise, as President Vladimir V. Putin last week questioned
whether the activities of the crew warranted the charge of piracy,
suggesting a desire to defuse diplomatic tension over the episode.
“I don’t know the details of what happened there,” Mr. Putin had said,
speaking at an international conference on the Arctic that coincided
with the ship seizure, “but obviously they are not pirates. However,
formally, they tried to seize our platform.”
It was not clear why federal prosecutors did not follow Mr. Putin’s cues and proceeded with the piracy charges.
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Greenpeace activists had tried to scale the sides of the Prirazlomnaya
oil platform belonging to Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of Gazprom, in the
Pechora Sea, an inlet off the Arctic Ocean.
The organization said its goal was solely to draw attention to the
environmental risks of drilling in the Arctic, and not to take control
of the platform. The Arctic Sunrise was towed into Murmansk last week
after armed border guards descended from helicopters and seized it. The
police detained the entire crew and accompanying journalists, in total
citizens of 17 countries, including the American captain, Peter Willcox.
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Greenpeace had touched a nerve concerning Russia’s economic future. The
Russian authorities have insisted they will press ahead with an
ambitious plan to drill for oil and natural gas in Arctic waters that
are now accessible for longer periods of the year. Russia intends to
replace an estimated 10 percent drop in oil output caused by the
depletion of old fields over the next decade by drilling offshore.
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Conservation groups say that though the Arctic is warming, it is still
covered with sufficient ice to render drilling perilous in a fragile and
changing environment.
Amnesty International has called on Russia to release the activists.
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The Greenpeace case underscores points of contention between Russia and
Western governments recently, in spite of a deal with the United States
to cooperate in disarming Syria of its chemical weapons.
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Defying an international outcry, Russian courts last year sentenced
members of the protest group Pussy Riot to two years in prison. And
Russian authorities recently granted asylum to the former National
Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden — though asserting they did
so reluctantly and after the United States had blocked his exits from
Russia.
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The detention of those aboard the Arctic Sunrise has raised a separate
point of concern for advocates of journalists’ rights. Russian
authorities declined to distinguish between the videographer charged
Wednesday, Mr. Bryan, and a Russian freelance photojournalist, Denis
Sinyakov, and the activists and crew on the ship.
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A Russian Web site, Lenta.ru, reported that Mr. Sinyakov had been on
assignment from Lenta to cover the Greenpeace protest. Mr. Sinyakov has
previously worked for the Reuters news agency. To protest his detention,
Lenta and other Russian online news sites withheld photographs from
news reports on Friday, posting black or gray squares instead.
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The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement calling the
possible charge of piracy against Mr. Sinyakov “laughable,” as “the only
thing he intended to take from the scene was pictures.”
