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.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article