The Danish government has released environmental activist Paul Watson after rejecting Japan's extradition request. The founder of the NGO Sea Shepherd, who has been detained in Greenland since this summer, can now return to France, where he lives with his wife and two young children.
Denmark ha finally made the formal decision to refuse his extradition to Japan, Paul Watson's lawyers told French daily Libération on Tuesday.
"Our Danish colleagues have just given us the good news," Emmanuel Jez, one of Watson's French advisors said.
The 73-year-old activist will finally be able to leave Greenland after 149 days in prison and return to France where his wife and children are based.
Watson's detention was extended six times since July, and four of his appeals rejected, before the Minister of Justice, Peter Hummelgaard, made his decision.
"The procedure took longer than expected and hoped, given the public interest in this matter," the minister’s office told Libération.
Political pawn
Watson, was one of the founding members of Greenpeace. He went on to create Sea Shepherd and then the Captain Paul Watson Foundation.
He was detained on 21 July in Nuuk, capital of the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland.
He had been refueling his ship John Paul DeJoria, before heading on to "intercept" a new Japanese whaling factory vessel in the North Pacific, according to the CPWF.
He has been the subject of a Japanese arrest warrant since 2012, which accuses him of causing damage to a whaling ship in the Antarctic in February 2010.
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Tokyo also 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.
For Watson and his team, the extradition request had "nothing to do with what happened in 2010", but was "a very political question" and the need for "revenge" from Japan who faced pressure over "its illegal whaling activities".
Japan, Norway and Iceland are the only three countries that still allow commercial whaling.
Relief
For Watson's supporters, the news of his release is a huge relief.
"We are proud to have led this legal and political fight alongside his loved ones," said François Zimeray, one of his lawyers and former French ambassador to Denmark between 2013 and 2018.
"He will be able to resume his fight for respect for nature, which is a fight for humanity and justice. Japan tried to silence a man whose only crime was to denounce the illegality of industrial massacre disguised as scientific research," Zimeray told Libération.
"I find it hard to believe it, it’s surreal," said Lamya Essemlali, the president of Sea Shepherd France and friend of the American-Canadian activist, who requested French citizenship in October.
"I have just left my hotel and am heading towards the prison, he will be released in the next few hours."
(With newswires)
