A SCOT was last night under ship arrest along with eight other

Greenpeace activists following their attempts to disrupt Norwegian

whaling.

Mr Simon Reddy, 27, from Forres in Moray, a member of the Greenpeace

voluntary action team, was in an inflatable dinghy which was intercepted

by Norwegian Coastguards when the campaigners launched their dinghy to

intercept a Norwegian whaler, the Senet on Sunday.

Five Britons, two Germans and two Dutch Greenpeace activists were

arrested by the Norwegians on Sunday. All are now confined to the

Greenpeace vessel the MV Sirius which was towed by Norwegian coastguards

to the port of Egersund on Norway's south-west coast yesterday.

Mr Reddy said: ''I was dragged to a coastguard vessel, six of us were

put in a room nine feet square with two beds, there was nowhere to sleep

and we were kept for 15 hours. It was a complete abuse of civil

rights.''

Three Greenpeace activists have been charged with causing serious

criminal damage by cutting free a harpooned whale. The charges carry a

maximum sentence of four years.

Mr Reddy said: ''I have not actually been charged, but the ship does

not have permission to leave, they have taken all the inflatables off

the ship, and they have cordoned off the area at the quayside.''

Police officer Kjell Svarnes said the three -- two Britons, Mr Paul

Horsman, and Mr Paul McGee, and the Dutch captain Ron van der Horst --

were charged for cutting the trailing wire of a harpoon shot into a

minke whale from the Senet last week, depriving the whalers of their

catch.

The whale, with meat estimated to be worth 150,000 crowns (about

#15,000), disappeared into the sea. It is not known whether it survived.

Norway is allowing its whalers to catch 301 minke whales in the north

Atlantic this year in defiance of an international moratorium, arguing

that stocks total about 86,700 animals and are large enough to withstand

limited catches.

The whaling, resumed after a six-year break last year when Norway set

a quota of 296, has triggered running battles off Norway between the

Coastguard and Greenpeace and another environmental group, Sea Shepherd.

Another Greenpeace campaigner, Mr Stefan Flothmann, aboard the MV

Sirius said he believed the Norwegians authorities had weak evidence.

''The wire was cut in international waters. They would first have to

prove it was being legally hunted before they could claim that the whale

belonged to the Senet,'' he said.

He said the activists decided to cut loose the minke whale last week

as it was shot far from the head, near its dorsal fin, and seemed to

have a chance of surviving.

Mr Reddy has been living recently in Wales.