News has just come in that the Greenpeace crew, held in arrest aboard their ship Arctic Sunrise, must probably endure the vagaries of Russian State justice procedures.
The spokesman of the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office in Moscow, Vladimir Markin, said that an investigation is started on suspicion of piratery, violation of Russian souvereignty and endangering the environmental safety.
This is the same spokesman and Committee that has been harrassing many representatives of the Russian opposition. It is just weeks ago this Committee has played a distressing role in the sentence of detention camp for well known lawyer and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny.
Navalny, who ran for the position of mayor of Moscow on a critical campaign against the Putin-led government, had revealed several doubtful practices within state businesses in the oil and gas-industry.
It is not hard to see the link here to the Greenpeace case. Navalny supporters have been saying the campaign led by the Investigative Committee is aimed at scaring off all opposition.
It looks like Greenpeace is next in line to be bullied out of whatever claimed black gold bonanza Putin’s State wants to exploit.