MOSCOW, November 22 (RIA Novosti) – All but two of the 30 people detained during a Greenpeace protest in the Arctic Sea had been released on bail from Russian detention facilities by Friday evening, the environmental group said on its Twitter account.
One more activist has been granted bail and is expected to be released imminently, but a St. Petersburg court ruled earlier this week that Greenpeace activist Colin Russell from Australia should remain in detention until February.
Greenpeace will appeal the ruling.
The group of 28 activists and two journalists was arrested in September after attempting to scale an oil platform owned by an affiliate of state-owned energy giant Gazprom in protest at offshore drilling in the environmentally sensitive area.
In another legal breakthrough for Greenpeace on Friday, an international maritime court in Hamburg ruled that Russia should release Greenpeace’s impounded Arctic Sunrise icebreaker and free all of its crew from prison.
The case was referred to the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea by the Netherlands, the country where the Arctic Sunrise is registered.
Russia declined to take part in the proceedings, arguing that it had not ratified the treaty upon which the court was founded.
The Greenpeace group was initially accused of piracy, but that charge was later downgraded to hooliganism, which is punishable by a maximum sentence of seven years in jail.
The situation with Greenpeace was among the issues addressed Friday by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who met in the city of St. Petersburg.
The Turkish premier expressed hope that his co-national, who is one of those facing trial, would be released. Putin replied that the country’s political leadership was not authorized to interfere in the case.
The Turkish activist, Gizem Akhan, 24, was among those released on bail Friday.
