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Japan frees whale militants
17/01/2008 21:40 - (SA)
Tokyo - A Japanese whaling ship late Thursday handed over to an Australian customs vessel two anti-whaling activists who climbed aboard two days earlier, an official from Japan's Fisheries Agency said.
Australia sent the customs ship, the Oceanic Viking, to the Japanese whaling ship in a bid to end the stand-off involving the activists of the militant Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
"Two Sea Shepherd activists who intruded onto the Yushin Maru No 2 and have been in custody on the ship were handed over to the Oceanic Viking chartered by the Australian government," Hideaki Okada, a whaling official at the Fisheries Agency in Tokyo, said early Friday.
The activists - Australian Benjamin Potts, 28, and Briton Giles Lane, 35 - were detained Tuesday after boarding the harpoon ship to protest Japan's whaling programme.
US-based Sea Shepherd, a militant offshoot of the environmentalist movement Greenpeace, strongly opposes Japan's plan to kill some 1 000 whales in the Antarctic Ocean this season.
The group described the activists as hostages and said they were being held as Japan pressed for the group to agree to give up its harassment of the Japanese whaling fleet.
Attempts to contact Sea Shepherd's vessel, the Steve Irwin, on its satellite phone proved unsuccessful and there was no initial response from Australia's foreign ministry on the release.
Safe return
Japan, which says whaling is part of its culture, said it was trying to get rid of them safely.
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said earlier that his government was sending the customs ship to pick up the activists.
Australia initially dispatched the Oceanic Viking to monitor Japan's whaling as part of Western governments' campaign to stop the hunt.
The confrontation had forced the Japanese fleet to suspend the ativity.
The country uses a loophole in an international moratorium on the practice that allows "lethal research".
Officials in Tokyo, who had welcomed Australian efforts to solve the crisis, had earlier said Potts and Lane were being treated well and receiving showers, tea - and a traditional meal of tempura - on the ship.
Japan's state-backed Institute for Cetacean Research had released a photo of the two men sitting inside the ship and being served tea to counter Sea Shepherd's account that they were being mistreated.
Tokyo also disputed the militant group's contention that the whaler had captured the men.
Shipborne activists from Greenpeace had also been pursuing Japanese whalers to prevent them making catches.
Although relations have remained cordial between the respective governments, Australia's Federal Court on Tuesday ordered Japan to stop hunting and killing whales anywhere around its coastline or off Australian Antarctic territory.
- AFP
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