DHAKA: Russian prosecutors have accused around 30 Greenpeace activists of piracy and say they will prosecute all of them for trying to board an Arctic oil platform.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, modelled on the FBI, will question the activists. Six Britons are among them.

Their ship, the Arctic Sunrise, is being towed to the port of Murmansk.

Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said ‘all those who assaulted the platform, regardless of nationality, will be prosecuted’, reports the BBC.

The campaigners were detained on Thursday along with their ship after two Greenpeace activists tried to climb onto a Gazprom offshore platform, in a protest against oil drilling in the Arctic.

The ship was raided by armed Russian men in balaclavas who abseiled down from helicopters.

The ship was seized in the Pechora Sea, near the rig.

Greenpeace said the Russian authorities ‘are holding 30 of our activists’, though that figure was not confirmed by Russian officials.

BDST: 1436 HRS, SEPT 24, 2013
RoR/BSK