Paul Watson will still have to wait to decide his fate. The third request for release presented by his lawyers was rejected on Wednesday, October 2, by the court in Nuuk, capital of Greenland, where the Canadian defender of marine biodiversity has been imprisoned since July 21. Local justice considers that he should remain behind bars for three more weeks, until October 23“in order to ensure their presence within the framework of the extradition decision” claimed by Japan from Denmark, a kingdom of which Greenland is a part.
This prison extension is “disproportionate”, his defenders reply, in view of the accusations against him. Paul Watson, 73, is, according to them, the victim of an affair “assembled from scratch”. “The Danish authorities must realize that his detention and possible extradition are illegal. There is a surprising discrepancy between what this man is accused of and what he is subjected to. In Japan he would end his days in prison for events that did not occur, since this country does not offer the basic guarantees necessary for a fair trial.says François Zimeray, one of his lawyers, former French ambassador in Copenhagen between 2013 and 2018.
“This is all based on a false accusation made by a criminal enterprise, the Japanese whaling industry.” Paul Watson said as he entered court Wednesday. In the eyes of Tokyo, the founder of the NGO Sea Shepherd is responsible “forcible obstruction of commerce, bodily injury, invasion of a vessel and vandalism”for damage and injuries caused in 2010 to a Japanese whaler and its crew in the Southern Ocean. A ship supposedly dedicated to research, and not to the cetacean trade, banned since 1986 by the International Whaling Commission.
A “complex” situation
The relatively short extension of the imprisonment seems to confirm what the Danish Ministry of Justice had suggested in recent hours, namely that the Copenhagen ruling on the extradition should not be delayed any further. Until then, Greenlandic magistrates clearly prefer to remain cautious, knowing that in 2012, Paul Watson disappeared into thin air after being placed under house arrest in Germany.
“The attitude of the Greenlandic judges can also be read as a provincial assertion of sovereignty and independence from the former Danish colonial power,” notes a lawyer involved in this case, on condition of anonymity. In fact, the arrest of the complainant would have occurred at the initiative of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, two independent countries that constitute the Kingdom of Denmark. The extradition procedure is certainly in the hands of Danish justice, but it must rule in accordance with Greenlandic law.
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