This photo released by Greenpeace on November 11, 2013 shows a prison van (R) in front of a railway prison wagon at a marshalling yard near the Murmansk train station. Russia moved the crew of a Greenpeace Arctic protest ship from the northern port of Murmansk and put them on a train to Saint Petersburg, the organisation said on November 11, 2013 (AFP)
Thirty people arrested in Russia over a protest against Arctic oil drilling were moved from the northern city of Murmansk on their way to pre-trial detention centres in St. Petersburg, federal investigators and Greenpeace said.
The transfer of the 28 activists and two journalists may be aimed at curbing international criticism of Russia over what the environmental group says was a peaceful protest.
Activists have reported being confined for 23 hours a day in bleak, sometimes ice-cold cells in Murmansk, a port city above the Arctic Circle whose remote location complicates access for lawyers and consular officials.
The Kremlin has essentially rejected Greenpeace head Kumi Naidoo’s offer to travel to Russia and stand as security for the release of the detainees, who come from 18 nations on five continents.
They were arrested after coastguards boarded the Greenpeace icebreaker Arctic Sunrise following a protest at an oil platform owned by state-controlled Gazprom off Russia’s northern coast on September 18.
Charged with hooliganism and facing up to seven years in prison if convicted, they had been denied bail and held in pre-trial detention in Murmansk, 1,000 km (640 miles) north of St. Petersburg.
Lawyers who tried to visit them today were told they had been moved out before dawn, Greenpeace said and Russia’s federal Investigative Committee said they would be taken to detention facilities in St. Petersburg.
«St. Petersburg has some daylight in the winter months, unlike Murmansk,» Ben Ayliffe, an Arctic campaigner for Greenpeace said in a statement, but said there was no guarantee of better conditions.
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