UN court directs Moscow to let Greenpeace activists leave Russia

The International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea has ordered Russia to immediately release the Greenpeace activists, who were detained on September 19, on receipt of a €3.6 million (£3m) bond from the Netherlands.

Zee Media Bureau/Tarun Khanna

Moscow: The International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea has ordered Russia to immediately release the Greenpeace activists, who were detained on September 19, on receipt of a €3.6 million (£3m) bond from the Netherlands.

The Greenpeace activists were detained for attempting to stage a protest against oil drilling at Prirazlomnaya platform in the Pechora Sea.

The ruling came after five of the six Britons jailed for involvement in a Greenpeace protest in Russia were finally released on bail after spending more than two months in custody.

The activists who walked free from prison on Thursday included Russian freelance photographer Denis Sinyakov, Greenpeace press secretary Andrei Allakhverdov and Finnish activist Sini Saarela, who was one of those to scale a state-owned oil platform.

Meanwhile, the Tribunal said that the Greenpeace activists shouldn’t suffer because of conflict between Russia and Netherlands. Besides this, it also said that the latter should pay the security deposit in the form of bank guarantee.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had earlier said he believed the Greenpeace activists were acting with good intentions, but that they were wrong to climb up the oil platform and ram the boats of coastguards.

Citing the order, Russia foreign ministry issued a statement on Friday that the nation doesn`t have to comply with the ruling of the Tribunal and that it had no jurisdiction in the case.

Netherlands, on the other hand, has been asking the Tribunal to order release of the detained activists.

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