COPENHAGEN (AFP) – A Greenland court will decide whether to further extend United States-Canadian anti-whaling activist Paul Watson’s time in custody pending a decision on his extradition to Japan, where he is wanted over an altercation with whalers.
“The public prosecutor has requested an extension of the custody period,” the prosecutor in charge of the case, Mariam Khalil, told AFP in an email.
Yesterday’s hearing is Watson’s fifth since his arrest in July in Nuuk, capital of the Danish autonomous territory.
The 73-year-old activist was detained on a 2012 Japanese arrest warrant, which accuses him of causing damage to a whaling ship in the Antarctic in 2010 and injuring a whaler.
Watson, who featured in the reality TV 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.
He was arrested on July 21 when his ship, the John Paul DeJoria, docked to refuel in Nuuk on its way to “intercept” a new Japanese whaling factory vessel in the North Pacific, according to the CPWF.
Watson’s lawyers said they expected the court to keep him in custody. “We don’t expect the Greenland court to change direction,” said one of Watson’s lawyers, Julie Stage.
She and the defence team have appealed the Nuuk court’s previous rulings to Denmark’s supreme court. “The more time that passes, the greater the sense of injustice,” said head of Sea Shepherd France Lamya Essemlali, who has travelled to Nuuk for each of Watson’s hearings.
“In 10 days, it will be four months since he was jailed, which corresponds to the maximum sentence he would have been handed if he had been convicted,” she said.
The Danish Justice Ministry has not said when it will announce its decision on the extradition request.
It recently received two reports it had been waiting for – from the Greenland police and the Danish prosecutor general – before making a decision.
