Whale defender Paul Watson, detained in Greenland and wanted by Japan for an action against a whaling ship in 2010, has asked «political asylum» in France with a letter addressed to the president Emmanuel Macronas announced this Wednesday by the NGO Sea Shepherd.
Watson made the request to Macron a few days agoas confirmed at a press conference in Paris by Lamya Essemlali, president of Sea Sheperd France, founded by the 73-year-old environmental activist.
Watson, who has dual American and Canadian citizenship, was arrested in july in Nuuk for an arrest warrant issued in 2012 by Japan, where he is accused of damaging one of its whaling ships in 2010 in the Antarctic, as well as injuring a crew member with a stink bomb.
Also promoter of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF), he is known for his radical tacticswhich include confrontations with whaling ships at sea.
In early October, a Greenland court extended his detention until October 23, pending the Danish government’s decision whether to extradite him to Japan. His lawyers defend his innocence and they claim to have videos proving that the supposedly injured crew member was not on board when the stink bomb was dropped.
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