This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
Eleven Nobel Peace Prize laureates urged Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday to drop piracy charges against 30 Greenpeace activists detained over a protest at an Arctic oil rig last month.
If convicted they could face 15 years in jail.
"We are writing to ask you to do all you can to ensure that the excessive charges of piracy ... are dropped and that any charges brought are consistent with international and Russian law," the Nobel laureates said in their open letter to Mr Putin.
The letter, whose signatories included South African anti-apartheid campaigner Desmond Tutu, described the September 18 action in which the activists tried to scale the Prirazlomnaya oil rig as "a peaceful, non-violent protest."
Other signatories included Jody Williams, who won the prize in 1997 for working to ban anti-personnel landmines, and Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won in 1980 for human rights activism in Argentina.
Russian authorities have ordered the activists to remain in detention until November 24, with the courts denying bail to 16 of them.
Russian coastguards forcibly boarded the Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise icebreaker after the protest and towed it to the northern port city of Murmansk, where all aboard were arrested.
Mr Putin is on record as saying that the 30 detainees - who come from 18 countries - are not pirates, although their protest violated the law, and his human rights aide has urged the relevant law enforcement bodies to drop piracy charges.
A local court in Murmansk denied bail to two more of the activists - Colin Russel of Australia and Mannes Ubels of the Netherlands - on Thursday.
Russia's top investigative body has warned that the activists may face fresh charges after it claimed that drugs had been found on the Arctic Sunrise.
Greenpeace denies there were any illegal items aboard and stated that any drugs could only be from the ship's medical supplies.
The targeted Prirazlomnaya oil platform is owned by Russia's state power giant Gazprom and is a key element in Russia's plan to tap into the Arctic's huge resources.
