The American-Canadian activist was arrested in Greenland in July on a 2012 arrest warrant for protesting a Japanese whaling vessel two years earlier. A court extended his detention on Wednesday
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Fifteen MEPs from the Greens, Left and S&D called on Thursday, in front of the Danish Embassy in Brussels, for the release of Paul Watson, the activist against whaling detained in Greenland.
A Greenland court, independent territory under the sovereignty of Denmark, ruled Wednesday that Watson should remain in prison pending a ruling on his extradition to Japan, which accused of damaging a Japanese whaling vessel and injured a crew member during a protest on the high seas in 2010.
Judges said there was a risk that Watson, who is a Canadian and U.S. citizen, would flee if released, and his custody was extended until October 2.
Watson, 73 years old, founder of the Sea Shepherd organization and from 2022 at the head of the Captain Paul Watson Foundationwas arrested last July while in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, on the basis of a Japanese arrest warrant.
“It is a human rights issue because we are talking about a person in a country that does not respect the rights of the accused. But it is also an exemplary case of protection of environmental defenders, because there is a criminalization of the environmental movement as a whole”, he denounced Emma Fourreau, French MEP of the Left group.
“We have to defend Paul Watson, who is currently under arrest for protecting nature,” added Lena Schilling, Austrian MEP for the Greens/EFA.
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