AFP – Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson has requested French nationality, his lawyer Jean Tamalet told AFP on Thursday, as Paris pushes for his release from a Greenland jail where he is being held pending possible extradition to Japan.
Watson, who had been living in France until his July 21 arrest, filed the request on Wednesday, said Tamalet, who coordinates the 73-year-old's defence team.
The request "makes total sense when you realise that since 1977 he's been giving everything to protect the marine ecosystem, whereas France has the second-largest coastline in the world," Tamalet added.
Watson was arrested when his ship docked to refuel in Nuuk, the capital of the Danish Arctic territory, on its way to intercept a Japanese whaling vessel in the North Pacific, according to his foundation.
He is being held on a 2012 Japanese arrest warrant that accuses him of causing damage to a whaling ship in the Antarctic in 2010 and injuring a whaler.
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Greenland extended the detention of Watson – a prominent marine wildlife conservation activist – on Wednesday.
French Energy and Ecological Transition Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said Thursday that France would call for Paul Watson's release by the Danish authorities.
"The allegations against him, from our point of view, do not justify detention," she told broadcaster FranceInfo.
Watson had previously written to French President Emmanuel Macron to ask for political asylum.
French officials have previously urged Copenhagen not to extradite him but have said that a person must be in France to file an asylum claim.
Watson, a master mariner, was one of the founding members of Greenpeace. He went on to create Sea Shepherd and then the Captain Paul Watson Foundation.
