Free Republic

Even for Greenpeace, a group known for turning high-seas drama into political statement, the foray into the Nantucket Sound wind farm debate has played like perfect theater. Take, for instance, the picture-postcard morning of Aug. 17, when a pair of Greenpeace motorboats surrounded a schooner crammed with wind farm opponents, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It was a made-for-TV face-off that, indeed, was reported on the national news that night. But for Greenpeace, a $360 million organization that spends about $3.3 million each year on U.S. campaigns, ongoing efforts for the Cape Wind project transcend interrupting a Kennedy sail. Today,...

Russia began dropping cases on Wednesday against the Greenpeace activists, detained over a September protest staged at a Russian Arctic oil rig, as part of a broad prison amnesty approved by state lawmakers earlier this month. The St. Petersburg Investigative Committee had formally dismissed charges against at least 16 of the activists by Wednesday afternoon. All 30 are expected to be cleared by the end of the day. The activists should be able to go home within days once they receive exit visas.

MOSCOW, November 7 (RAPSI) – Some participants of the Greenpeace raid on a Gazprom drilling platform, dubbed the “Arctic 30”, may face new charges in the ongoing trial, the Investigative Committee’s official spokesman Vladimir Markin said on Thursday. “Some of the raiders, in addition to the hooliganism charges, will be charged with resisting law enforcement officials," Markin said in an online interview to Gazeta.ru. The Arctic Sunrise ship was seized by Russian border guards on September 19 in international waters, within Russia's exclusive economic zone, a day after two Greenpeace activists scaled the Prirazlomnaya drilling rig in the Pechora Sea,...

I was locked up on the ship from Thursday 19 September 18:30 until Tuesday evening. I was one of the first ones to be taken in to what I thought would be an interrogation. There I sat, on a chair inside a cold room. Next to me was a translator, a young lady, who apparently had studied English. She told me that a written report had to be compiled on the incident. I requested a Dutch translator and was told, "That's not possible." I willingly stated that I would confirm my personal details, but that I would not say anything...

Our North-Western department has opened a criminal case on probable violation of the part 3 article 227 of the Russian Criminal Code "piracy committed by an organised group". The investigators have claimed that a group of people, probably associated with the "Greenpeace" international ecological organization approached the sea platform "Prirazlomnaya" on the ship "Arctic Sunrise" and attempted an illegal descent onto that platform. Their illegal action was foiled by officers of the Murmansk province's border-guarding department of the FSB. We must state that the ship 'Arctic Sunrise' used by the persons who attempted an illegal descent onto "Prirazlomnaya" was in...

Russian border guards said Friday that they would tow Greenpeace's Arctic protest ship to port after armed officers boarded the ship and locked up the activists. Border guards stormed the ship after Greenpeace activists scaled an oil platform owned by state energy giant Gazprom to protest against planned drilling on the Arctic shelf. Special forces officers armed with guns locked up crew members on the Arctic Sunrise icebreaker ship after lowering themselves onto the deck with ropes from a helicopter. "At this moment, the Arctic Sunrise ship is being taken to the port of Murmansk," Greenpeace said on Twitter on...

The crew has been herded to the upper deck and forced to stay there kneeled at gunpoint. Some crewman locked themselves in the radioshack. A search is underway, doors are being beaten out. We still hold the press-room from Spetznaz. We'll keep on writing on what is going on here. We don't know for how long the door will survive.

A Ketchikan jury correctly convicted a Greenpeace ship's captain of criminal negligence for sailing in Alaska waters without the proper oil spill response plan, the state appeals court ruled Thursday. The opinion partly cancels a 2005 decision by a Ketchikan judge to overturn guilty verdicts against Greenpeace Inc. and Arctic Sunrise Capt. Arne Sorensen of misdemeanor charges. At the time of its anti-logging campaign, the ship was carrying more than 70,000 gallons of "petroleum products," according to district court documents. In Alaska, non-tank vessels larger than 400 gross tons must file an oil spill response plan application five days before...

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkish tuna fishermen rammed their boat into a Greenpeace ship Friday and pelted it with lead fishing weights, the environmental group said. No one was injured. The fishing vessel was among several that swarmed the Arctic Sunrise, which was carrying activists campaigning against overfishing in the Mediterranean. The boat rammed the Greenpeace ship at high speed, said Yesim Aslan, a spokeswoman for the group. The barrage of lead weights damaged a helicopter that the activists had used earlier in the day to document the vessels' activities, Aslan said.

Japan on Wednesday released a video in a bid to prove Greenpeace targeted its whaling ship in an Antarctic collision this week and accused the environmentalists of violent tactics. Japan's main whaling body put a video on its website that showed Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise moving steadily forward before hitting the whaling ship Nisshin Maru, whose movement was impeded by another whaling vessel nearby. "It was a deliberate action to get media coverage," Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research said in a statement. "The Arctic Sunrise could have avoided this collision. Instead the skipper turned the boat into the path of the...