Seal stolen in Free Willy style operation

Apparently inspired by the film Free Willy, a group of activists has stolen a young seal that earlier escaped from a German zoo to set it free.

Hannes escaped from the zoo in Nordhorn, near the Dutch border, in late August. The male seal, then 11-weeks-old, was soon spotted swimming in a nearby Dutch river.

“Hannes’s pen had a low barrier, and he was able to jump it and then swim through an open gate,” said spokeswoman Simone Schuls of the Netherlands’ Pieterburen Seal Asylum, which helped recapture the animal last month and was caring for it.

Pieterburen wanted to release the adolescent seal into Dutch coastal waters rather than return it to the zoo, but the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture was still deliberating on his fate when Hannes disappeared .

Schuls said a person claiming to be part of an activist group called Free Hannes made anonymous call from a German phone booth today claiming to have released the seal “by daylight, into open salt water,” apparently in the North Sea.

Schuls said that although the telephone conversation was short, the person who placed it revealed “confidential information” that proved they knew the seal well. She would not elaborate.