Putin clears Greenpeace of piracy

Russian president Vladimir Putin has said Greenpeace activists held after trying to scale an offshore oil platform are not pirates, but he defended the action saying Coast Guard officers had no way of knowing who they were.

Two members of the group were detained after they tried to climb the Arctic platform. The coast guard seized Greenpeace’s ship the next day and towed it with 30 activists aboard, to Murmansk, where they are being questioned by investigators considering piracy charges.