Late last week Steven Ahle reported that 30 members of Greenpeace were being detained in a Russian prison while awaiting trial for illegally trying to board an offshore oil rig.
Thirty members of Greenpeace have been languishing in a Russian prison while awaiting trial for trying to illegally board a state owned offshore drilling rig. One member who is a nonsmoker shares a cell with a chain smoker and a vegetarian isn’t served special meals to her liking and there’s not a drop of Evian water to be found anywhere.
Twenty six of them are from countries other than Russia, including Britain, the United States, Finland and Argentina. Doesn’t Russia understand that they are “special”? They are the heroes of the planet and if they put people’s lives in danger, so what? It’s for their own good. Maybe they should call Amnesty International, after all, they are only a few cell blocks over.
Yesterday the plot thickened as reports came to light that narcotic substances had been found aboard the Greenpeace ship, The Arctic Sunrise. The Daily Mail reports:
Drugs including poppy straw and morphine have been found aboard a Greenpeace ship whose crew were detained for protesting against Arctic oil drilling, Russian authorities claimed today.
The illegal ‘narcotics’ were discovered after armed officials boarded the vessel as environmental activists attempted to scale an oil platform in the remote Pechora Sea in the Russian Arctic.
Teams from the Russian coastguard abseiled onto the Arctic Sunrise from helicopters and arrested 30 crew members, including six UK nationals, last month.
The group has since been held on piracy charges although officials claimed today that given ‘new evidence’ of drugs being found on the ship the charges could now be ‘modified.’
Most of our readers are likely familiar with Morphine and for those who don’t know about Poppy Straw, it can be easily used in the production of morphine or heroin.
There is no report of the quantities that were found and though a small amount of morphine may be understandable, for emergency medical purposes, an explanation of poppy straw being found would be tough to justify.
If you break the law you should have to pay the consequences. It doesn’t matter if you are Greenpeace or some average Joe.
I must quote a reader of Steven Ahle’s article who I think summed it up perfectly. Roy McDade states, “These criminals have been breaking the law too long with impunity. They ALL need a LONG stay in one of Russia’s high security prisons…”
Amen Roy!
