PARIS (AP) — Interpol said Tuesday it was removing a most-wanted designation for anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson, who is sought by Japan over an encounter with a whaling ship and who was jailed for several months last year in Greenland.
Watson, 74, is a former head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, whose high seas confrontations with whaling vessels have drawn support from celebrities and featured in the reality television series “Whale Wars.”
Japan wants his extradition over an encounter with a Japanese whaling research ship in 2010, when he was accused of obstructing the crew’s official duties by ordering the captain of his ship to throw explosives at the whaling ship. He and his team deny those allegations.
Starting in 2012, Watson had been subject to a “red notice” of Interpol, the Lyon, France-based international police body. A red notice is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending legal action, based on a warrant from the judicial authorities in the requesting country, in this case Japan.
The Canadian-American activist — whose recent long white hair and beard give him a Santa Claus look — has long criss-crossed the world's oceans in an almost singular focus on defending whales, feeding his popularity among environmentalists, animal-rights activists and others. Critics have questioned his often-combative methods.
Watson was arrested and jailed on the Japanese warrant last year in Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, but released after five months.
“My first reaction is that the decision ends 14 years of politically motivated persecution and underscores the blatant illegality of Japanese whaling operations in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary,” Watson said in a brief statement provided by Sea Shepherd France.
“A small justice victory for me, a major justice victory for the whale,” he added.
Denmark does not have an extradition treaty with Japan, where Watson's foundation said he could have faced a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, and the Danish government declined to extradite him to Japan.
At the time of his release, the Danish Justice Ministry said it had not received adequate guarantees from Japanese authorities that the time Watson had already served in custody would be counted against any sentence he would receive in Japan.
In a statement, Interpol said the decision to remove Watson from the “red notice” list did not reflect any judgment on the merits of the case in Japan, but that it did take into account Denmark's refusal to extradite him.
“This is not a judgement on the merits of the case, or the events that occurred in 2010,” the Interpol statement said.
The police agency said the decision was made by an independent body, the Commission for the Control of Interpol's File, which is tasked to ensure that the police body's processing of personal data adheres to its internal rules.
The decision said Japan had “vigorously engaged” with the commission during the review, which "may be demonstrative of the existence of political elements around the case.” The decision noted that other countries, aside from Denmark, had refused to extradite Watson.
Watson, after his release in December, told the AP that he was planning to travel to Interpol to make his case in person.
The move means that data about Watson held by Interpol will be deleted from its extensive databases, which track some of the world's most-wanted criminals and violent extremists.
Willam Julie, a Paris-based lawyer for Watson, said the commission recognized the “disproportionate nature of the charges” and “the considerable passage of time” since the incident with the whaling research ship.
In a phone interview, Julie said he had informed Watson about the decision, and his response was: “He's relieved ... He had to be resilient like he always is. He's happy we won.”
Lamya Essemlali, president of Sea Shepherd France, hailed the “good news that this notice was finally cancelled," but she noted that Watson still could be arrested and sent to Japan for prosecution.
“It does not give Paul Watson his freedom of movements because the Japanese arrest warrant is sufficient for a country to order his arrest,″ she said.
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Keaten reported from Geneva.
