Environmental activist Paul Watson is released from prison in Nuuk, Greenland on Dec. 17.Alataq Moeller/Arctic Creative/The Associated Press
Denmark rejected Japan’s request to extradite Canadian-American Paul Watson in a decision released Tuesday, freeing the anti-whaling activist after five months in a Greenland jail.
Sought through an Interpol red notice, Mr. Watson was arrested aboard his ship in Nuuk, Greenland, as it prepared to dock in the capital of the Danish autonomous territory to refuel in July. He was on his way to the Pacific to monitor whether the Japanese would return to whaling in the Antarctic.
Japan had sought his arrest over an encounter with a Japanese whaling research ship in 2010 in the Antarctic. Mr. Watson was accused of obstructing the crew’s official duties by ordering the captain of his ship to throw explosives at the whaling vessel.
In an interview from his hotel in Nuuk on Tuesday, Mr. Watson, 74, said the first thing he did upon his release was to call his wife. “I just said ‘I’m free and coming back and I’ll see you on the weekend,’” he said. “She was crying so there wasn’t much to say.”
After his first meal of coffee, fries, falafel and salad, he spent the day doing interviews and trying to arrange for travel to Paris, where he lives with his wife and two sons, aged 3 and 8. So far, he’s not sure how he will get home without travelling through Copenhagen or Iceland, risking another Interpol arrest. The police organization confirmed the red notice remains valid, despite Denmark’s decision.
But Mr. Watson said he’s confident he’ll be home by Christmas.
“The worst part is over and I’m out of prison,” he said. “We’ll find a way to get out.”
Mr. Watson had awaited a decision on his extradition in detention in Greenland for the past 149 days. During a jailhouse interview with The Globe and Mail in October, he said his arrest was “blatantly political” – revenge for embarrassing and humiliating the Japanese in his television reality series Whale Wars, he added. He faced a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison in Japan, his foundation has said.
While conditions for extradition were met, the Danish Ministry of Justice decided to free Mr. Watson “based on an overall assessment of the case,” according to the decision released Tuesday. Danish Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard said he had not received adequate guarantees from Japanese authorities that the time Mr. Watson had already served in custody would be counted against any sentence he might receive in Japan.
“There has been a good and close dialogue with the authorities of Japan during the processing of the case,” Mr. Hummelgaard wrote.
Raised in the fishing town of St. Andrews, N.B., Mr. Watson was one of the early founders of Greenpeace in the 1970s but left the group over disagreements about his radical tactics. He is the former head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which he left in 2022. Now, he’s the head of the Paul Watson Foundation, a U.S.-based ocean-conservation non-profit.
Worldwide, he’s known as a controversial figure, supported by many celebrities including Brigitte Bardot and Jane Goodall, who has aggressively confronted whaling vessels at sea and led a campaign that effectively ended the commercial seal hunt in Canada.
Denmark’s decision comes after several adjournments, including one last month when the Danish government inquired about the nature of the offences and the fact that they were more than 14 years old, and asked whether Japan would deduct time from a possible jail sentence, based on the amount of time until an extradition decision was implemented.
In Japan, whale meat is part of the food culture, and the country says it supports the sustainable use of whales. Japan withdrew from the International Whaling Commission in 2019 and has since resumed commercial whaling within its exclusive economic zone.
While in jail over the last five months, Mr. Watson busied himself reading and responding to more than 4,000 letters and drawings he received. It’s not lost on him that being in the north with a long white beard, he bears a certain resemblance to Santa Claus, and now, considering how limited his travel options are, he might need a magic sleigh to get home.
“I got quite a few letters from children thinking I was Santa Claus in jail, so they were all a little upset about that,” he chuckled.
Within the last several days, handmade and AI-generated Lego scenes of Paul Watson in jail, surrounded by orcas and whales, have been popping up on social media under the hashtag #LegoforPaulWatson – an activity he says he hopes to do with his children over Christmas.
With a report from Associated Press