A Russian court has remanded in custody all 30 crew members of a Greenpeace protest ship over a high seas protest against oil drilling, the group said on Friday, vowing to appeal.
The Lenin district court in the northern city of Murmansk ruled that 22 crew members will remain in pre-trial detention for two months during the investigation into alleged piracy over the September 18 protest at a state-owned oil platform.
The other eight from Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise icebreaker face new hearings on Monday after judges ruled that they needed further information.
The court concluded marathon hearings into the 30 crew members of Greenpeace’s ship early on Monday. The activists, 26 of them foreign nationals, will now be held in jail.
Russian investigators have accused the Greenpeace activists of piracy after two of them tried to scale state energy giant Gazprom’s Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the Barents Sea.
Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo said the environmental group would appeal the detentions.