Greenland court extends Paul Watson time in custody until December 18, 2024
NUUK, Greenland––“The court in Greenland has today decided that Paul Watson shall continue to be detained until December 18, 2024 in order to ensure his presence in connection with the decision on extradition,” a Danish police statement declared on December 2, 2024.
The Greenland court decision, repeating the outcome of five previous hearings, ensures that Watson, 74, will have been imprisoned in Nuuk, Greenland for at least six months pending a Danish government ruling on whether to extradite him to Japan to stand trial on charges that could keep him in the notoriously harsh Japanese penal system for up to 15 years.
Are there kangaroos in the Japanese judicial system?
Acquittal by a Japanese court even under ordinary circumstances is surpassingly rare; Japanese courts boast of a conviction rate exceeding 99%.
Watson since 2010 has been possibly the most notorious purported fugitive from Japanese justice worldwide.
Disrupting Japanese whaling operations for decades, Watson is charged as an accessory to incidents that began when yachtsman Pete Bethune, now 59, sailed his bio-fueled racing vessel, the Ady Gil, to confront the Japanese Antarctic whaling fleet as part of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society protest flotilla.
(Joanne McArthur/Sea Shepherd photo)
Case began in 2010 with saga of the Ady Gil
On January 6, 2010 the Japanese whale-catcher Shonan Maru #2 rammed the Ady Gil, which was dead in the water while the crew ate lunch, cutting the Ady Gil in two.
The Sea Shepherd vessel Bob Barker rescued the Ady Gil crew and took the Ady Gil in tow, but left it to sink when it filled with water and became so heavy that the tow rope snapped.
On February 14, 2010, Bethune boarded the Shonan Maru #2 from a Jet Ski taken from the Bob Barker in the early hours of the morning.
Bethune handed the Shonan Maru #2 captain a bill for the loss of the Ady Gil.
Taken to Japan, Bethune was given a two-year prison sentence, suspended for five years, of which he actually served five months in a maximum security prison. As part of that sentence, Bethune named Watson as a co-conspirator.
Upon his release from prison, after leaving Japan, Bethune signed an affidavit in which he claimed to have named Watson only to get a reduced sentence.
Busted on July 21, 2024
Watson was arrested on July 21, 2024 by Danish police flown to Greenland from Denmark specifically to detain him on a Japanese warrant issued in 2012 as an accessory to allegedly interfering with a lawful business, trespass, damage to property, and assault, based on Bethune’s testimony.
Watson’s arrest came just moments after the Captain Paul Watson Foundation vessel the John Paul DeJoria landed at Nuuk to refuel.
The John Paul DeJoria, most recently reported off Bermuda, was en route to the North Pacific via the Northwest Passage, between northern Canada and the Arctic ice field, to try to disrupt the fall 2024 self-set Japanese whaling season.
The Northwest Passage is open only during the summer months. The arrest and detention of Watson ensured that the John Paul DeJoria could not catch up to the Japanese whaling fleet until early 2025, at soonest.
“Denmark seems reluctant to decide”
The Japanese whaling factory ship Kangei Maru, launched in May 2024, is currently at sea off the northwest Japanese coast, having remained so far within Japanese territorial waters.
Reported Anne-Françoise Hivert, correspondent from Malmo, Sweden, for the French newspaper Le Monde, “Denmark seems reluctant to decide,” on the Japanese request for the extradition of Watson, “torn between requests from Japan and France.”
On July 23, 2024, according to Hivert, “the Elysée Palace announced that President Emmanuel Macron was monitoring the situation closely and had interceded with the Danish authorities to prevent Watson’s extradition.
“Denmark is also under pressure from environmental organizations, as well as from its autonomous territories, the Faroe Islands in particular, which practice whale hunting and do not appreciate” Watson’s anti-whaling activities,” Hivert wrote.
“In Copenhagen, Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard, of the Social Democratic party, has still not said when he intends to make his decision,” Hivert concluded.
(Sea Shepherd France photo)
The French connection
Watson, renowned for his anti-whaling and sealing activity as a founding member of Greenpeace, 1972-1977, founding director of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society 1977-2022, and of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation since then, is a Canadian with a French wife and two French-born sons.
The French connection is central to Watson’s present focal strategy for avoiding extradition to Japan.
French attorney Jean Tamalet, representing Watson, told Agence France Presse on October 24, 2024 that “Watson has requested French nationality,” having previously asked French President Emmanuel Macron to grant him political asylum.
“French officials have previously urged Copenhagen not to extradite Watson,” Agence France Presse reported, “but have said that a person must be in France to file an asylum claim.”
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Reading your detailed descriptions of some of the actions of the Sea Shepherds in confronting
the evil of whaling brought me back to the many scenes in Animal Planet’s breathtaking coverage of
these courageous behaviors. Completely gripping. Impossible to turn away one’s head. One had to watch.
And this brought me back to the eloquent writing of Paul Watson–so infused with a moral voice,
emotional connection to the animals he was trying to save, and fearless passion.
So here we are in 2024….and whaling continues. The government of Japan,
indifferent to the suffering of whales, hell-bent on vengeance toward Paul Watson,
rigid in its arrogance, and incapable of expanding its vision beyond holding on to its own profit and power,
remains where it has always been.
It would be wonderful if the people of Japan would rise up against their government’s brutal behavior
toward whales.
Thoughtful comments from poster Irene Muschel. With all the admiration I have for Japanese culture, I have to agree on the fact that not only is there no regard for whales, but there is also very little regard, if any, for anyone who steps outside the rigid bounds of behavior therein, and if that miscreant is a foreigner, probably all the more so. It is not so very different here, where acting on one’s conscience on behalf of the voiceless is often met with punitive action. We are a perverse and all too often faithless species.
Sharing with gratitude, and much more.