Russia Accuses Greenpeace Activists of Piracy
Dmitri Sharomov/Greenpeace, via Associated Press
Ana Paula Alminhana Maciel of Brazil, shown on Sunday in court in Murmansk, was one of the Greenpeace activists charged with piracy on Wednesday.
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.
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 questionedwhether 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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