Posted on 06/10/2010 4:04:16 PM PDT by aMorePerfectUnion
JAPANESE prosecutors have demanded a two-year prison sentence for Sea Shepherd activist Peter Bethune over an assault charge stemming from his boarding of a Japanese whaling ship in the Southern Ocean.
The New Zealander has been detained since his arrest over the boarding in February, during which Japanese prosecutors allege he injured a crewman on board the Shonan Maru 2 by throwing a bottle of rancid butter at him. Prosecutors told Tokyo District Court yesterday that chemical burns to the face of a 24-year-old whaler were "clearly caused by rancid butter fired by the defendant".
Bethune, 45, clambered aboard the Shonan Maru 2 from a jet ski and "carried out actual attacks" on the ship as part of the Sea Shepherd's campaign against Japanese whaling, prosecutors said. The former captain of the Sea Shepherd's anti-whaling vessel Ady Gil pleaded guilty to four of five charges, including trespassing, vandalism and holding a knife, but has contested an assault charge.
continued...
Bethune told the court in earlier hearings he had aimed to present the ship's captain with a $US3 million ($3.6m) bill for the destruction of the Ady Gil during a collision between the two vessels. He denied any intention to hurt anyone. The Sea Shepherd group dumped Bethune this week after revelations in the New Zealand press that a bow and arrows were found aboard the Ady Gil.
In a separate case, prosecutors in Japan this week sought an 18-month jail term for two Japanese Greenpeace activists charged with theft after they approached authorities with evidence of fraud in Japan's state-subsidised whaling industry.
The charges centre on a box of whale meat from a depot in the northern Japanese city of Aomori that Greenpeace's Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki presented to police in 2008 as proof that meat from the scientific whaling program was smuggled off the Nisshin Maru whaling vessel and illegally sold or eaten.
Greenpeace said the pair wanted to expose corruption, but an official investigation was dropped on the grounds that such meat parcels were "souvenirs" and not sold.
A month after reporting their findings, Sato and Suzuki were hit with theft and trespass charges, which Greenpeace said were politically motivated.
He’s lucky I wasn’t the prosecutor. He’d been facing terrorism charges.
“He’d been facing terrorism charges.’
Piracy, walk the plank.
Methinks Peter Bethune has screwed with the wrong legal system. His two years will probably go hard.
Ii always amazes me that libtards, of all stripes, want to continually brak the law without penalty to themsleves, especially when they want to make a “citizen’s arrest” of someone who has actually broken no law. Just thinks more clearly than they do.
It was delicious!
I did feel a pang of guilt and would not ask for or seek out anyplace serving it, but think of the juiciest and most flavorful pork fillet imaginable and you'll get the idea.
It is openly sold in the huge Tsukiji fish market (along with every other form of marine life you can think of). Of course, that being said Long Pig is supposed to be a real picnic favorite on certain Pacific islands.
He is lucky they are only going after him for this. The Sea Shepard hippies could have many counts of piracy added.
Damn, I was hoping this was the fat guy.
LOL @ the South Park insert
Please let me know if you want on or off the Whale Wars ping list.
Whales are nearly to the overpopulation point on the West Coast. You can rarely go to the coast w/o seeing them spouting.
Pray for America
Keelhaul him then send him to jail for two years
Always good for some humor, for one hour you can forget about oil spills, Obama's lies, an economy in hell and unemployment through the roof.
See Obamaites in action, you'll be laughing profusely.
I only wish the parents of the hippies were spayed and neutered :)
Hah! one of the funniest ping lists I’ve ever seen on FR.
Please sign me up!
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