MURMANSK, October 21 (Itar-Tass) - A regional court in Murmansk, northern Russia, on Monday upheld the sentence of a court of lower jurisdiction to extend the arrest of Marco Paolo Weber, a Swiss activist of the Greenpeace environmental group, until November 24.
A Greenpeace representative told Itar-Tass that the hearings into Weber’s case had been postponed from October 15 because not all the documents, including the indictment, had been translated from Russian.
Besides, some of the documents had been translated into English although Weber’s native language is German. Weber told the court that it was inconvenient for him that the hearings were being conducted in English. He asked to provide him with an interpreter into German and demanded that all the court documents should also be translated into his native language.
Earlier on Monday, the court also dismissed the appeal of Finnish national Sini Saarela.
A regional court in the Russian city of Murmansk on Monday upheld a decision of the court of lower jurisdiction to extend her arrest until November 24, a Greenpeace representative in Russia told Itar-Tass.
Saarela and other Greenpeace activists from the Arctic Sunrise ice-breaker were detained in September as they tried to get onboard the Prilazlomnaya oil platform in the Pechora Sea in the northwest of Russia.
Saarela told the trial that she had been in the Pechora Sea to warn people about the dangers of oil drilling in the Arctic.
“Her counsel for the defense asked to release her on a 30-million-rouble bail. However, the court refused to give any comments and left her in custody in a pre-trial detention ward,” the Greenpeace representative said.