Posted on 04/13/2008 8:20:22 PM PDT by Clive
A judge in Sydney, N.S., granted bail Sunday for two men arrested Saturday on an anti-sealing vessel in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Six other crewmembers remain in immigration custody for failing to comply with immigration rules.
The two officers of the Dutch-registered vessel, the Farley Mowat, were taken into RCMP custody early Saturday following a confrontation with a coast guard ship on March 30.
The men have been charged with approaching a seal hunt without a permit.
Captain Alexander Cornelissen and first officer Peter Hammarstedt will be released on $5,000 bail, a spokeswoman with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said Sunday.
"They haven't been released yet," Allison Lance said Sunday. "We're posting bail and they will be released as soon as that happens."
If convicted, the maximum penalty is six months in jail and a $100,000 fine.
A criminal trial has been set for May 1.
Mr. Cornelissen and Mr. Hammarstedt were the only two who were criminally charged after armed RCMP officers seized the Farley Mowat, and arrested 17 of its crew members.
Everyone was brought into Sydney late Saturday night.
Ms. Lance said six crew members remain in custody by Canada Customs and Immigration because they declined to fill in immigration papers.
"They have refused to sign themselves into Canada," she said. "They didn't want to come into Canada. They were brought at gunpoint into Canada."
The six have been identified as Amber Paarman of South Africa, Dan Villa, Greg Hager and Merilee Nyland of the United States, Anne Fournier of France and Merryn Redenbach of Australia.
The group have gone on hunger strike to protest their situation.
The 11 who have been released, have also staged a hunger strike in front of the jail where their fellow crew members are being detained.
Ms. Lance said the seized Farley Mowat is expected to arrive at the Sydney harbour later Sunday.
Canada's fisheries minister Loyola Hearn defended his decision to raid the anti-sealing ship Saturday, saying that it had taken place in Canadian waters and in accordance with Canadian fisheries legislation.
He said the ship had failed to comply with warnings to proceed immediately to Sydney and continued to violate marine and fisheries regulations.
Canadian authorities allege that the Mowat endangered lives when it came close to a group of sealers on March 30, about 60 kilometres off of Cape Breton.
Nova Scotia sealer Shane Briand said at one point, the Mowat broke the ice up beneath a sealer as he stood on a floe.
Briand said the much larger Mowat harassed his ship and crew until a coast guard icebreaker arrived and put itself between the two ships.
The Fisheries Department says during the incident the icebreaker was "grazed" by the Mowat, while the Sea Shepherd Society says its ship was rammed.
In a news release Sunday, Captain Paul Watson, head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said he is worried about images and video that were contained on computers and laptops on the Mowat now under the possession of the Canadian Department of Fisheries.
"It is these images of brutal sadistic slaughter on the ice floes that Canada is desperate to keep hidden," he said in the statement. "What the Sea Shepherd crew have witnessed over the last two weeks has exposed the lies of Canadian government claims that the seal slaughter is inhumane."
Watson who was en route to Sydney Sunday, called the arrests "an act of war," claiming that the vessel had been out of Canadian jurisdiction when it was seized.
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I don’t think I have any use for seal fur/meat. The article is one sided. I don’t condemn sea shepperd for disrupting this or the Japanese whalers. I know I’ll caught h~ll for saying that.
I’m a Yank. I thought this seal hunt was in Saskatchewan, not Nova Scotia.
"Watson who was en route to Sydney Sunday, called the arrests "an act of war," claiming that the vessel had been out of Canadian jurisdiction when it was seized."
Very dramatic.
Also very wrong.
Article 111 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea provides as follows:
Right of hot pursuit1. The hot pursuit of a foreign ship may be undertaken when the competent authorities of the coastal State have good reason to believe that the ship has violated the laws and regulations of that State. Such pursuit must be commenced when the foreign ship or one of its boats is within the internal waters, the archipelagic waters, the territorial sea or the contiguous zone of the pursuing State, and may only be continued outside the territorial sea or the contiguous zone if the pursuit has not been interrupted. It is not necessary that, at the time when the foreign ship within the territorial sea or the contiguous zone receives the order to stop, the ship giving the order should likewise be within the territorial sea or the contiguous zone. If the foreign ship is within a contiguous zone, as defined in article 33, the pursuit may only be undertaken if there has been a violation of the rights for the protection of which the zone was established.
2. The right of hot pursuit shall apply mutatis mutandis to violations in the exclusive economic zone or on the continental shelf, including safety zones around continental shelf installations, of the laws and regulations of the coastal State applicable in accordance with this Convention to the exclusive economic zone or the continental shelf, including such safety zones.
3. The right of hot pursuit ceases as soon as the ship pursued enters the territorial sea of its own State or of a third State.
4. Hot pursuit is not deemed to have begun unless the pursuing ship has satisfied itself by such practicable means as may be available that the ship pursued or one of its boats or other craft working as a team and using the ship pursued as a mother ship is within the limits of the territorial sea, or, as the case may be, within the contiguous zone or the exclusive economic zone or above the continental shelf. The pursuit may only be commenced after a visual or auditory signal to stop has been given at a distance which enables it to be seen or heard by the foreign ship.
5. The right of hot pursuit may be exercised only by warships or military aircraft, or other ships or aircraft clearly marked and identifiable as being on government service and authorized to that effect.
6. Where hot pursuit is effected by an aircraft:
the provisions of paragraphs 1 to 4 shall apply mutatis mutandis,7. The release of a ship arrested within the jurisdiction of a State and escorted to a port of that State for the purposes of an inquiry before the competent authorities may not be claimed solely on the ground that the ship, in the course of its voyage, was escorted across a portion of the exclusive economic zone or the high seas, if the circumstances rendered this necessary.the aircraft giving the order to stop must itself actively pursue the ship until a ship or another aircraft of the coastal State, summoned by the aircraft, arrives to take over the pursuit, unless the aircraft is itself able to arrest the ship. It does not suffice to justify an arrest outside the territorial sea that the ship was merely sighted by the aircraft as an offender or suspected offender, if it was not both ordered to stop and pursued by the aircraft itself or other aircraft or ships which continue the pursuit without interruption.
8. Where a ship has been stopped or arrested outside the territorial sea in circumstances which do not justify the exercise of the right of hot pursuit, it shall be compensated for any loss or damage that may have been thereby sustained.
The ship was arrested pursuant to hot pursuit. Even if the hot pursuit was found to be not valid the treaty itself speaks to that circumstance and provides its own remedies.
Not that a hot pursuit can continue completely across the ocean until the pursued vessel was arrested or it entered the home waters of its flag (in this case, the Netherlands) or the territorial waters of a state other than Canada.
Both Canada and the Netherlands are signatories to the Convention.
The nearest territorial waters to which it could have had resort was that of the French islands of St Pierre et Miquelon. The Farley Mowat is not welcome there. When it entered the Port of St Pierre last week the locals cut its docking lines with axes.
It makes a practice of radical maneuvers in the path of longliners and Coast Guard vessels in defiance of all the rules of seamanship.
It repeatedly came within the lawful distance required to be maintained by vessels not participating in the hunt or vesssels licensed to observe it despite repeated warnings by the Coast Guard.
Have you taken the trouble to look at the viewpoint of the sealers and the Governemnt of Canada or are you yourself taking a "one sided" stance.
As the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans pointed out, something had to be done to stop this lawless behaviour before somebody got killed.
The seal hund is humane and regulated with quotas set so as to preserve the seal herd as a future resource.
You might wish to read this briefing by Fisheries and Oceans Canada:
Technical Briefing on the Harp Seal Hunt in Atlantic Canada
The hyperlinked briefing contains this paragraph:
Canada’s seal population is healthy and abundant. The harp seal herd — the most important seal herd for this industry — is estimated at around five million animals, nearly the highest level ever recorded, and almost triple what it was in the 1970s
It also contains this:
A Humane HuntNumerous organizations have studied the hunting methods used in the Canadian seal hunt and they have found them to be humane.
The hunting methods presently used were studied by the Royal Commission on Seals and Sealing in Canada and they found that the clubbing of seals, when properly performed is at least as humane as, and often more humane than, the killing methods used in commercial slaughterhouses, which are accepted by the majority of the public.
Methods used to kill seals in Canada were found to be generally more humane than the shooting of animals for sport. The Commission also found that no methods of killing which have come to their notice, other than clubbing or shooting, achieve acceptable standards of humaneness.
Just goes to show how delusional these leftwing moonbats are. He thinks he's his own country, and has a 200 mile limit around his ship. What the Canadians should do is tow it out to deep sea near the titanic and scuttle it.
bkmark/thanks
But others do. Your view is the same as the views anti- gun nuts have. They son't see a need for guns, so nobody should have them.
Anti smokers- They don't see a need for people to smoke, so nobody should.
Anti meat- they don't see why people need to eat meat, therefore no one should.. Etc...
You are a liberal. Why are you on this site if you disagree with the peoples right to liberty and the persuit of happiness? To eat what they want, drive what they want, hunt for their own food, utilizing what nature provides for food and clothing in their traditional ways?
You belong at DU where they seek the comfort of each other being miserable and bitch about those who enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I don't know what you enjoy doing, but I'm sure there is someone who doesn't like it. They have every right then according to your beliefs to try kill you while you are doing it.
Not like the old days.
I still remember the incident in 83’ when they invaded a SIBERIAN whaling town and handed out flyers to the townsfolk.
It made for some very bemused KGB agents.
Given that there is no NEED for anyone to smoke, you weakened your post by including that.
"We're on a hunger strike!"
When did you last eat...
"This morning in jail before we were released, but no food will pass our lips until our remaining members are released!"
Don't they just have to fill out the immigration forms?
"This fascist government will give in to our demands! It's CANADA!"
So...it's a hunger strike that's been going on since breakfast, over six who haven't been released because they won't fill out their immigration paperwork. Such determination you guys show...
It was Farley Mowat himself who posted the $5000 each bail for the two who are out now.
To think I once put Mowat and Jim Kjelgaard on the same platform as children’s authors.
At least *I* grew up...
They will say that there was no jurisdiction on the High Seas to arrest. That will be true, unless The Netherlands is a signatory to an applicable Law of the Sea Treaty.
Does anyone know?
Cannon fire would have been more efficient.
Next time they should just scuttle the ship, and then "rescue" the survivors.
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