The Swiss environmental activist Marco Weber learned this week that he will be staying in a Russian prison until at least November 24. Should the Greenpeace campaigners have expected such a harsh response from the Russian authorities?
Weber looks completely harmless, but the Russian authorities beg to differ: he is one of 30 activists facing a possible 15 years behind bars for piracy arising from their protest against oil drilling in the Arctic.
On October 21, Weber and the others were denied bail by a court in the northern city of Murmansk.
Journalists in Russia have been joking that the activists would have done better to protest by dancing in a church – like the Pussy Riot members arrested in 2012: it would have been less expensive, would have made just as much noise, and they would have ended up with much shorter sentences.
Weber’s case could be more serious than that of most of the other detainees: he and Sini Saarela of Helsinki did not merely sail up close to Gazprom’s Prirazlomnaya oil drilling rig, they also attempted to scale it.
According to his colleagues, Weber, who had been working on the ship for a long time, «is one of the best of us». They describe him as a «warm-hearted and very tough». His nickname, Chruseli or «Curly», got transformed into Crusoe, because of his love of travelling. At the age of 28 he has already been to Iran by motorbike, and has also visited North and South America, Asia and Russia. In addition he teaches Greenpeace activists climbing techniques. By trade he is a carpenter, and has his own small firm, which – according to his father Eduard –will probably fold during the time he spends in prison.
Consequences
Were the activists prepared for the fact that they could be arrested in Russia? Members of the Swiss section of Greenpeace gave swissinfo.ch different answers. «We can’t say, we don’t have anything to do with them.» «You can’t put someone on trial for trying to climb a wall.» «People who take part in actions are aware of the consequences.»
Andreas Freimüller, a former Swiss Greenpeace activist, who was placed under arrest in Murmansk in 1992 during an expedition to the Arctic, bases his opinion on experience. Since the early 1990s he has visited Russia many times, and believes that 20 years ago there was a trend towards openness in the country, but that in recent years the screws have been tightened.
«In the 90s we never heard anything about ending up in prison for taking part in a demonstration,» he told swissinfo.ch.
Greenpeace is present in Moscow today and they are perfectly well aware of changes in legislation – including a 2012 law obliging NGOs that receive any part of their funding from abroad to register as «foreign agents». So the people who are now in prison in Murmansk knew where they were going. However, they did not expect to be prosecuted for piracy, a crime not even President Putin thinks has been committed.
Legal process
Peter Gysling, the Moscow correspondent of Swiss public radio and television, SRF, says it is hard to predict whether the activists will be given prison terms, but that the legal process could drag on so long that they will spend a few months, or as much as a year in jail.
«I think today that the foreign activists could be released in the run-up to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and perhaps even sooner,» Gysling told swissinfo.ch.
«But for the Russian citizens who have been arrested (who are not in fact activists), the outlook could be much bleaker. Unfortunately.»
The three Russians are Greenpeace press officer Andrey Allakhverdov, the ship’s doctor, Yekaterina Zaspa, and a professional photographer, Denis Sinyakov.
«As the West sees it, the Russian action in towing away the boat and arresting the Greenpeace members in international waters is completely illegal and unjustified. But others will decide about that,» Gysling added.
More than a million signatures have been collected worldwide in support of the detainees, and 11 Nobel laureates have sent a message about the case to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Switzerland’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper commented that the confrontation with the Greenpeace activists could turn out to be more dangerous for Russia than competition with its Arctic neighbours.