Greenpeace Head Offers Himself as Bail for Jailed Activists

The head of Greenpeace International has offered himself as human bail for 30 environmental activists being detained in Russia.

Kumi Naidoo wrote a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that he was prepared to act as a guarantor for the good conduct of the activists.

“I would come equipped only as the representative of millions of people around the world, many of them Russian, whose fervent wish is to see an early end to the continued imprisonment of the thirty brave and peaceful men and women held in Murmansk,” Naidoo wrote, as cited by RIA Novosti.

Greenpeace’s icebreaker, Arctic Sunrise, was seized by border guards in September after several activists tried to scale an oil rig operated by an affiliate of state-run energy giant Gazprom in the northern Pechora Sea, to protest against what the group claims is the risk of massive damage to the Arctic environment from Russia’s nascent offshore drilling program there.

The Dutch-registered ship was towed to Murmansk, where all 30 people on board were charged with piracy, which in Russia is punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and put in pretrial detention.

Defense lawyers for four foreign detainees said Wednesday that they have filed appeals against pretrial detention.

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