A Greenland court on Wednesday extended the detention of US-Canadian anti-whaling activist Paul Watson for three more weeks, pending a decision on his possible extradition to Japan, police said.
It was the fifth extension of Watson’s detention since he was arrested in July in Nuuk, capital of the Danish autonomous territory.
“The court in Greenland has today decided that Paul Watson shall continue to be detained until December 4, 2024 in order to ensure his presence in connection with the decision on extradition,” Greenland police said in a statement.
For “practical reasons”, Watson’s next hearing would be held on December 2, it said.
The 73-year-old activist was detained on July 21 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 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 lawyer Julie Stage had told AFP before the hearing that she did not expect the Greenland court to order his release.
She and the defence team appealed Wednesday’s ruling to Denmark’s supreme court, as it has done for all of the previous rulings.
“The more time that passes, the greater the sense of injustice,” Lamya Essemlali, the head of Sea Shepherd France, told AFP ahead of the hearing.
“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.
– Danish decision pending –
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.
If Denmark refuses his extradition, “there would no longer be any reason for detention and (Paul Watson) would be released as soon as possible,” Mariam Khalil, the prosecutor in charge of the case, told AFP.
If Denmark agrees to Japan’s extradition request, Watson’s lawyers would lodge an appeal.
Tokyo accuses Watson of injuring a Japanese crew member with a stink bomb intended to disrupt the whalers’ activities during a Sea Shepherd clash with the Shonan Maru 2 vessel on February 11, 2010.
Watson’s lawyers insist he is innocent and say they have video footage proving the crew member was not on deck when the stink bomb was thrown. The Nuuk court has refused to view the video.
In September, Watson’s lawyers contacted the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, claiming that he could be “subjected to inhumane treatment” in Japanese prisons.
In a rare public comment on the case, Japan’s Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya recently said the extradition request was “an issue of law enforcement at sea rather than a whaling issue”.
Watson hopes to be freed to return to France, where he had been living since July 2023 and where his two young children go to school.
He requested French citizenship last month.
Watson’s legal woes have attracted support from members of the public and activists, including prominent British conservationist Jane Goodall, who has urged French President Emmanuel Macron to grant him political asylum.
Japan, Norway and Iceland are the only three countries that still allow commercial whaling.
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