The French branch of the NGO he created, Sea Shepard, was the first to announce this news on the social network X, also applauded and relayed by numerous environmentalist and left-wing personalities.
Demonstrations, petitions, Facebook pages: tens of thousands of people have been mobilizing for months to demand the release of the famous 74-year-old cetacean defender. The activist can now join his wife and sons in France, where he resides and where he has requested political asylum and nationality. In his host country, his support goes beyond environmentalist circles. Last July, the Elysée announced that President Emmanuel Macron was following “the situation closely” and had “intervened with the Danish authorities” to avoid the extradition of Paul Watson, wrote The World.
The embarrassed Damenark
The case had become embarrassing for Denmark which had tried, in vain, not to make it a political affair. After months marked by heated debates in the European Parliament, the Danish Ministry of Justice decided to reject the request for extradition to Japan, where Paul Watson faced a prison sentence of up to 15 years.
The environmental activist was arrested last July in the port of Nuuk, capital of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, for acts dating back to 2010 in Antarctic waters. Tokyo, which accused him of having accosted a whaler and injured a member of the crew, issued an international arrest warrant against him in 2012.
Paul Watson, for his part, was first pleased to have been able to draw attention to whaling thanks to this stay in prison, before rejoicing at being able to spend Christmas with his family. “I’m certainly relieved because it means I’ll be able to see my two little boys,” he told the Guardian. That’s really been my only concern all along. I understand the risks of what we do and sometimes we get arrested – although I am proud to have never been convicted of a crime.
A “clever” technical argument
Denmark is getting out of a delicate situation, the French daily noted this Wednesday: by refusing to extradite the famous protector of cetaceans to Japan, the Danish government “came out of the diplomatic quagmire into which it had been plunged for soon five months. The activist’s defense had already warned that it would refer the case to the Danish Supreme Court, but also to the European Court of Human Rights in urgent procedure, if his extradition was accepted.
“Denmark has found a clever technical argument for not satisfying Japan, without humiliating it,” comments William Bourdon, one of Paul Watson’s lawyers, in Le Monde. Extradition was refused due to the time elapsed since the alleged acts – 14 years – and the nature of these acts.
But above all because the Danish Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard believes that he did not obtain sufficient guarantees during discussions on this subject with the Japanese authorities, that the five months already spent in prison by Paul Watson would be deducted from a possible custodial sentence, as he clarified in a public statement emphasizing that there is no extradition treaty between Japan and Denmark.
In this statement, the Danish government denies any criticism of the Japanese judicial and penitentiary system, specifying that “Denmark does not share the concerns expressed by certain parties regarding the concrete case of the Japanese judicial system and the protection of human rights in Japan. Japan is a democratic country guided by the rule of law. A close and quality dialogue was established with the Japanese authorities during the handling of the case.
For Japan, a “regrettable” decision
“It is regrettable that the Danish government did not accept our extradition request and we have made our reaction known to them. Japan will continue to handle this case as appropriate based on evidence and the law,” Yoshimasa Hayashi, spokesperson for the Japanese government, responded on Tuesday. In Japan, we have difficulty understanding the European enthusiasm for this activist, writes Libération’s correspondent in Tokyo.
In the pages of the French daily, Hideki Tokoro, boss of the Kyodo Senpaku company, which owns and operates the main Japanese whaling fleet, expresses his anger and incomprehension: “This decision surprised me. Frankly, Watson is guilty of crimes, what he did was attempted murder against our crews.” The boss, a figure in commercial cetacean fishing, hopes that the Japanese government will not drop the matter and will continue to demand the extradition of Paul Watson. “It would be unfortunate if the offenses he committed were taken lightly. We have collected the evidence.”
The Japanese media covered this affair relatively little. But the defender of whales is not favored by the general Japanese public, who consider him rather a “terrorist” or a “crook whose actions aim to collect funds under the pretext of saving cetaceans”, notes Libération: “Much do not understand why Western countries are so concerned about whales that the Japanese authorities do not consider to be endangered species.
A pioneer of Greenpeace, Paul Watson participated in the first operations of the ecological association in its beginnings before leaving to found the organization Sea Shepard (shepherds of the sea) in 1977, which has since become known for its spectacular operations at sea against whale poaching using controversial methods, which have earned him several legal proceedings and criticism from followers of non-violence. It was also because of his break with the exclusively peaceful line of Greepeace that he was excluded from the environmental organization.
The fate of the activist was the subject of a debate in the European Parliament in September. The far-right German MEP Siegbert Droese (Alternative for Germany) then called him an “ecoterrorist”. As soon as he was released from prison, Paul Watson immediately filed a defamation complaint with the Paris court.
