ST.PETERSBURG, December 13. /ITAR-TASS/. Anne Mie Roer Jensen, Danish Greenpeace activist, who participated in the September action at the Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the Arctic, has been denied permission to leave Russia. Greenpeace representatives expect that all foreign activists from the ecological movement will be denied the exit visas as well and will have to celebrate Christmas in St.Petersburg.
“Anne Mie Roer Jensen has received an official letter from the Investigative Committee's department in the Russian Northwestern Federal District. The letter says Anne is not allowed to leave Russia,” a Greenpeace representative told Itar-Tass on Friday, adding that, according to the letter, the Investigative Committee would not ask Russian migration authorities to issue transit visas to foreign activists.
“Activists’ lawyers expect that other foreign crewmembers will get denials in much the same way,” she said, noting that a decision on how to react to the situation was being pondered.
Earlier, the head of the Federal Migration Service for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, Elena Dunayeva, said that the Russian migration service was ready to grant transit visas in the event the Investigative Committee, which was entitled to decide on whether or not to restrict the exit from the country, gave its permission.
The press service of the Investigative Committee's department in the Russian Northwestern Federal District has made no comments yet.
Greenpeace activists have been released on bail and are currently living in a hotel in St. Petersburg. At the beginning of December, activists’ lawyers asked the Russian Investigative Committee to grant exit visas to their defendants. In the event of approval, 26 nationals of 17 countries would be able to leave Russia before the termination of the investigation.
On September 18, the campaign group's ship The Arctic Sunrise reached the Prirazlomnaya oil drilling platform in the Barents Sea, where activists tried to climb on board.
They were seized by Russian security guards and their vessel was towed to the port of Murmansk. Thirty crewmembers - nationals of 19 countries, including four Russians, - were detained.
After two months in a Russian jail facing charges of piracy, later reduced to hooliganism, they were granted bail last month.