“I want France to be our home”

Desperate, Paul Watson let out a short, muffled laugh. On Wednesday, October 23, in a courtroom in Nuuk, the capital of the Danish autonomous territory, the famous 73-year-old activist had just learned that he would have to remain in prison in the Greenlandic city until at least November 13. During these three additional weeks, which are in addition to the four months he has already spent in custody, the Danish Ministry of Justice continues to analyze the extradition request from Japan that was the basis for the international arrest warrant for the activist. On July 21, he was arrested during a short stop in Greenland to refuel the John Paul DeJoria boat.

As a snowstorm darkened the city, the Sea Shepherd founder sat across from Nuuk prosecutor Mariam Khalil in the courtroom with folded hands and a sad expression on his face. As she did during the last three hearings on his legal situation, held approximately every month, she again discussed the NGO’s actions against a Japanese whaler in 2010, during which Watson was accused of causing damage and participating in the “injury” of the sailor, whose the target was a stink bomb. To justify his continued detention, Khalil compared his case to a local case from 2017 in which a teenager fired live ammunition at a building and towards several people, missing them.

When the 73-year-old was irritated by the comparison, his lawyer Finn Meinel put his hand on his shoulder and said that “it’s shameful to compare the two.” Before a brief deliberation, lasting no more than ten minutes, Watson addressed the court: he questioned the court’s purpose before condemning a “politically charged matter” imposed by the Japanese whaling industry, a “criminal organization.”

Deprived of the sea, Watson moves heaven and earth to gain release. On Wednesday, October 16, in a letter sent to Emmanuel Macron, the activist asked France for political asylum. In it, he thanked the French president for his “support” and mentioned his admiration for author Jules Verne and Commander Jacques-Yves Cousteau, whom he met in 1986 at the World’s Fair in Vancouver, Canada. “I want France to be our home,” said Watson, who Le Monde they met on Tuesday, October 22, in a visiting cell at Nuuk Prison, isolated by a fjord.

Launching an important petition

For two years, the founder of Sea Shepherd has been dividing his time between Marseille, where his wife Yana Rusinovich lives with their two small children, Tiger and Murtagh, and a barge moored near the Pont des Arts. For now, the French government’s response is restrained: spokeswoman Maud Bregeon said in response to the request that the issue of granting Watson French citizenship had not yet been “decided.” When asked on October 18 on France Inter radio, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot responded with a procedural note, specifying that to submit such an application it would be necessary to be “in the country.”

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