The Danish Ministry of Justice has decided not to extradite whale activist and defender Paul Watson to Japan and has ordered his release, according to what his lawyer, Jonas Christoffersen, told Danish public television DR on Tuesday.
Watson, who was detained under an international arrest warrant issued by Japan, had been in preventive detention for nearly five months in a prison in Nuuk (Greenland), waiting for the Danish Justice to rule on the request for extradition of the Japanese authorities.
The Japanese country accused him of assaulting a ship that hunted whales in 2010 in a self-proclaimed “scientific campaign” in the Arctic. The International Criminal Court determined in 2014 that Those campaigns were illegal. by contravening the ban on commercial cetacean hunting agreed upon by the International Whaling Commission to which Japan then belonged – it ended up abandoning it in 2018 and restarted commercial hunting in 2019.
The 74-year-old activist and founder of the environmental organizations Greenpeace and Sea Sepherd Conservation Society, was arrested on July 21 when his boat docked in Nuuk, capital of this autonomous region.
At the beginning of August, Danish Justice received the Japanese extradition request against Watson, who was accused of having attacked whale hunters and hindering their activity in two episodes that occurred in 2010.
The Canadian-American activist, who currently collaborates with the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, denied the Japanese accusations and maintained at all times that his case was “political in nature” for pursuing illegal whaling practiced by Japan.
“I have always believed that it was a trivial matter that could not bear extradition, and I am very sorry that it cost him five months of his life,” Christoffersen said in statements reported by DR. “Now I assume he will take the first flight home, to France, where he can spend Christmas with his family,” Watson’s lawyer added.
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