MOSCOW, November 29 (RIA Novosti) – An Australian activist with the Greenpeace group detained by Russian authorities during a protest in September became the final member Friday to be released on bail from pretrial detention.
Greenpeace said on its Twitter account that Colin Russell was greeted and hugged by fellow activists as he left the detention facility in St. Petersburg.
The environmental group announced a day earlier that it had posted the 2 million ruble ($60,000) bail required for his release.
Russell’s wife Christine said she was flying to Russia with her daughter to meet up with her husband, Greenpeace said in a statement Thursday.
“My daughter and I are one step closer to being in the arms of my darling Col. I am so relieved that my beautiful, peaceful man will soon be out of detention,” Christine Russell said.
A group of 28 activists and two journalists was arrested in September after some of them attempted to scale the Prirazlomnaya oil platform owned by an affiliate of state-owned energy giant Gazprom in protest at offshore drilling in the environmentally sensitive Arctic.
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.
