MOSCOW: Russia moved the crew of a Greenpeace Arctic protest ship from the northern port of Murmansk yesterday and put them on a train to Saint Petersburg, authorities and the organisation said.
“The decision has been made to transfer all 30 of the accused to detention centres in Saint Petersburg,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement, saying that their charges “do not fall under the jurisdiction of courts in the Murmansk region.”
The Saint Petersburg prison service said in a statement that the “detention centres of the city are ready to receive these people,” without specifying which of the facilities would be used.
The 28 activists and two reporters, arrested in September after protesting against oil exploration in the Barents Sea, left their detention centre at 5am (0100 GMT) in a truck and are now on a train, said Greenpeace spokeswoman Dannielle Taaffe.
“The Arctic30 are being transferred away from Murmansk. They shouldn’t be in jail at all!” Greenpeace wrote on its Twitter account.
Greenpeace released photographs of guards in camouflage and a prison service truck parked on a snow-covered platform alongside a long-distance train carriage without windows.
The train was due to arrive in Saint Petersburg at 12.11pm today, Greenpeace said.
The No. 21 passenger train will pull into the city’s Ladozhsky station after a journey of about 1,500 kilometres that takes 27 hours.
But it was unclear whether the prison carriage would ever reach the city centre.
AFP
