COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Denmark has rejected a Japanese request to extradite anti-whaling activist Paul Watson over criminal charges dating back more than a decade, a Danish lawyer representing Watson said on Tuesday.
U.S.-Canadian Watson, 74, founder of the Sea Shepherd conservationist group and of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, was apprehended by police in Greenland when his ship docked in the Danish autonomous territory in July.
Denmark’s justice ministry, which is tasked with handling the extradition request, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Japan had issued an international warrant for Watson’s arrest, seeking him on charges of breaking into a Japanese vessel in the Antarctic Ocean in 2010, obstructing its business and causing injury as well as property damage.
(Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen, editing by Terje Solsvik)
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