Paul Watson, a Canadian-American, was ordered by the court on Wednesday to stay in jail until October 2 while the request is reviewed by Denmark’s justice minister. Denmark’s independent territory of Greenland is not party to an extradition agreement with Japan.
Read the Scuba News Canada Article on Paul Watson
Watson was the leader of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for a while, and the public has seen her high-seas clashes with whaling vessels. When his ship berthed in the capital of Greenland on July 21, he was taken into custody. Following an incident with a Japanese whaling research ship in 2010, the coast guard in Japan requested his arrest on the grounds that he had ordered the captain of his ship to throw explosives, so disrupting the crew’s official responsibilities. It is reported that Watson might spend up to 15 years behind bars.
Watson was one of the founding members of Greenpeace, a movement he quit in 1977 amid differences in the organization’s use of violent tactics. He established Sea Shepherd, a group devoted to preserving biodiversity and the oceans, in the same year. The tactics used, like hijacking ships in the middle of the ocean and damaging docked ships, brought notoriety to the captain and his group but also earned them criticism from those who opposed them. He founded Sea Shepherd Origins and the Captain Paul Watson Foundation in 2022 after being expelled from the organization due to internal conflicts. This allowed him to keep travelling the world, which he was doing.
