Released but not (yet) delivered. This Tuesday, the Danish court in Nuuk, Greenland, decided to release environmental activist Paul Watson, the founder of the NGO Sea Shepherd. If the latter is assured of being able to reach France to spend the end of year holidays, he is not out of the woods. We take stock.
Why was Paul Watson in prison in Greenland?
It’s an old affair that has caught up with the American-Canadian environmental activist. In 2010, a ship carrying Paul Watson confronted a Japanese whaling ship in the Antarctic. During the maneuver, a member of the Japanese whaler’s crew was injured. At least, that’s what the Japanese authorities said to justify the issuance of an arrest warrant against the founder of Sea Shepherd.
It was on the basis of this arrest warrant and an Interpol red notice that the Danish authorities arrested Paul Watson on July 21, while he was on board his boat off the coast of Greenland. . His pre-trial detention in a prison in Nuuk had since been renewed several times, the time for local justice to examine the extradition request made by Japan.
Why was Paul Watson finally released?
The person concerned has always denied having injured anyone during his actions against whaling. He and his supporters have continued to denounce a legal action taken solely with the aim of silencing him and so that he stops his actions against the whalers.
However, it is not only this that allowed him to leave prison, even if the Nuuk court partly based its refusal to extradite Paul Watson to Japan on “the nature of the acts in general” which are blamed. Danish justice also argued on “the total duration of [sa] detention after his arrest”, and on the fact that “the acts for which extradition is requested date back more than fourteen years”.
Why isn’t Paul Watson out of the woods yet?
Ultimately, the decision of the Danish court is his sole responsibility. The arrest warrant issued by Japan, which landed him 149 days in prison in Greenland, is still in force. Thus, a priori, that the “red notice” issued by Interpol, of which no trace has been found on the institution’s website. The notice requests “law enforcement agencies around the world to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition.”
In theory, therefore, the defender of whales could well see his Danish misadventure repeated elsewhere. This is why his lawyers now intend to “attack the Red Notice and the Japanese arrest warrant, in order to be certain that Captain Paul Watson can once again travel anywhere in the world, with complete peace of mind, and no longer know never a similar episode,” declared Jean Tamalet, Paul Watson’s defense lawyer, this Tuesday.
