Greenpeace

A Russian court has ordered that 10 Greenpeace activists, including an American ship captain, be held in custody for two months while the Russian authorities determine whether a protest last week at an offshore oil rig in the Arctic was an act of piracy. Russian border guards took control of the Arctic Sunrise, Greenpeace’s ship with 30 activists aboard, in international waters last week.

Russia is considering the fate of the remaining crew members, who were taken into custody after some of the environmental group’s activists scaled the rig, operated by Russian state energy giant Gazprom. The Greenpeace crew were protesting Russia’s plans to drill for fossil fuels in the fragile ecology of the Arctic. The ship was towed on Tuesday into a small bay near Russia’s Arctic port of Murmansk and the activists were bused to the local headquarters of Russia’s Investigative Committee.