COPENHAGEN (AFP) – Denmark yesterday decided against a Japanese extradition request for anti-whaling activist Paul Watson over charges dating back to a 2010 clash, his lawyer told AFP.
Watson has been held since July when his ship docked in Nuuk – the capital of the Danish autonomous territory – on a 2012 Japanese warrant, which accuses him of causing damage to a whaling ship and injuring a whaler.
“He is free. We’ve just been informed by the Ministry of Justice, he’s not going to be extradited,” Watson’s lawyer Julie Stage told AFP, adding that Watson would be able to leave jail in Greenland.
Watson, who featured in the reality television series Whale Wars, founded Sea Shepherd and the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF) and is known for radical tactics including confrontations with whaling ships at sea.
According to documents viewed by AFP, Denmark reached its decision while considering the duration of Watson’s detention following his arrest and the time it would take for a possible extradition to be carried out.
The ministry also considered “the fact that the acts for which extradition is sought are more than 14 years ago, and the nature of the acts in general.”
“The decision is based on an overall assessment of the circumstances of the specific case,” the ministry said in a statement.
Watson was arrested on July 21, when his ship was on its way to “intercept” a new Japanese whaling factory vessel in the North Pacific, according to the CPWF.
Tokyo accuses Watson of injuring a Japanese crew member with a stink bomb intended to disrupt the whalers’ activities during a Sea Shepherd clash with the Shonan Maru 2 vessel in 2010.
Watson’s lawyers have said they have video footage proving the crew member was not on deck when the stink bomb was thrown.
“Japan tried to silence a man whose only crime was to denounce the illegality of the industrial massacre disguised as scientific research,” one of his lawyers, Francois Zimeray, told AFP.
Zimeray added that Watson “will now be able to resume his fight for respect for nature”. In September, Watson’s lawyers contacted the United Nation special rapporteur on environmental defenders, claiming that he could be “subjected to inhumane treatment” in Japanese prisons.
In a rare public comment on the case, Japan’s Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya has said that the extradition request was “an issue of law enforcement at sea rather than a whaling issue”.
Watson’s legal woes have attracted support from the public and activists, including prominent British conservationist Jane Goodall, who has urged French President Emmanuel Macron to grant him political asylum.
