Japan to release anti-whaling activists

Japan has agreed to release a Briton and an Australian who were detained after storming aboard a Japanese whaling ship near Antarctica, Australian officials said today.

The Japanese whalers accused the activists of attacking their vessel with bottles of acid and illegally boarding the Yushin Maru No 2 yesterday, but denied claims the men had been assaulted and tied up on deck.

The anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd said the pair – Australian Benjamin Potts, 28, and Briton Giles Lane, 35 – boarded the ship to deliver a letter demanding an end to the hunt, but had been assaulted and were being held against their will.

The stand-off drew criticism from Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, whose officials contacted their Japanese counterparts last night to seek the release of the two activists.

“From the very first day I urged all parties in this matter to exercise restraint,” Mr Smith said. “It’s quite clearly the case that restraint hasn’t occurred here.”

The event was a rapid escalation of the annual contest between the fleet that carries out Japan’s controversial whale hunt in the ocean and the environmental groups who try to stop them.

Mr Smith said Japanese officials had promised to return Mr Potts and Mr Lane to the Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin.

He said Australian Federal Police were evaluating whether any laws had been broken.

Glenn Inwood, a spokesman for Japan’s Institute for Cetacean Research that organises the hunt, said the whalers’ attempts to contact Sea Shepherd to arrange a handover had failed and accused the group of stalling to get more publicity.

“It is completely illegal to board anyone’s vessel, any other country’s vessel, on the high seas so this can be seen as nothing more than an act of piracy by the Sea Shepherd group,” Mr Inwood said.

He confirmed the activists were restrained briefly on the deck of the Yushin Maru, but denied claims they were tied up for hours in freezing conditions.

Paul Watson, captain of Sea Shepherd’s ship Steve Irwin, defended the group’s actions as justified because the whale hunt was in violation of international law.

“The pirates down here are the Japanese,” he said.

Japan sent ships to Antarctica in November to kill about 1,000 whales under a programme that skirts an international moratorium on whaling because Tokyo says the kill is for scientific purposes. The programme is widely condemned as a front for commercial whaling.

Under intense international pressure, Japan abandoned its plans to include 50 humpback whales in this season’s hunt, which is due to run until April.