Anti-whaling activist arrested in Greenland, police say he could be extradited to Japan

BERLIN (AP) — Greenland police said they arrested a veteran environmental activist and anti-whaling campaigner on Sunday on an international arrest warrant issued by Japan.

Paul Watson was arrested when his ship docked in Greenland’s capital Nuuk, police said in a statement, adding that he would appear in a district court with a request to be detained pending a decision on his possible extradition to Japan.

More than a dozen police officers boarded the ship and led Watson away in handcuffs when it stopped for fuel, the Captain Paul Watson Foundation said. The foundation said the ship, with 25 volunteer crew members, was en route to the North Pacific on a mission to intercept a new Japanese whaling vessel.

“The arrest is believed to be linked to a previous Red Notice issued due to Captain Watson’s previous interventions to combat whaling in the Antarctic region,” the foundation said in an emailed statement.

“We call on the Danish government to release Captain Watson and not to accede to this politically motivated request,” Luke McLean, the foundation’s director, said in the statement.

Greenland is an autonomous region of Denmark.

Watson, a 73-year-old Canadian-American citizen, is a former president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and his direct tactics, including high-seas confrontations with whaling ships, have gained A-list celebrity support and been featured on the reality TV series “Whale Wars.”

But it also put him in conflict with the authorities. He was detained in Germany in 2012 on an extradition warrant from Costa Rica, but dropped bail after learning he was also wanted by Japan, which accused him of endangering the lives of whalers during operations in the Antarctic Ocean. He has since lived in countries including France and the United States.

Watson, who left Sea Shepherd in 2022 to start his own organization, was also a prominent member of Greenpeace, but left in 1977 amid disagreements over his aggressive tactics.

According to his foundation, Watson’s current ship, the M/Y John Paul DeJoria, was to sail through the Northwest Passage into the North Pacific to confront a newly built Japanese whaling ship, “a deadly enemy devoid of compassion and empathy, bent on destroying the most intelligent and sentient beings in the sea.”