Readers like you keep news free for everyone.
More than 5,000 readers have already pitched in to keep free access to The Journal.
For the price of one cup of coffee each week you can help keep paywalls away.
Efrem Lukatsky/AP/PA
Russian coast guard boat, left, and the Greenpeace ship 'Arctic Sunrise', right, anchored next to it.
# Russia
Greenpeace activists could face 15 years in Russian prison for piracy
The 30 activists from 18 countries have been detained since they scaled an oil platform in the Arctic last week.
ACTIVISTS FROM ENVIRONMENTAL group Greenpeace have been moved to pre-trial detention centres in and around Russia’s far northern city of Murmansk after being questioned over their open-sea protest, the group said today.
The New York Times reports that Russia has opened a piracy investigation against the 30 activists who scaled an offsore oil platform in the Arctic last week.
“They have been transferred to pre-trial detention centres,” Yevgenia Belyakova, a Greenpeace activist in Murmansk, told AFP, adding the 30 Russian and foreign activists have been taken to jails in and around Murmansk after being questioned last night.
Among the group are citizens from 18 different countries and if convicted of piracy, they could face up to 15 years in prison.
- © AFP 2013 with additional reporting by Michelle Hennessy.
Read: Greenpeace activists arrested in France after nuclear plant break-in>
Read: Greenpeace prevented from posting protest pictures on Twitter and Facebook>
