Russia will pay out €2.7 million to Greenpeace after the Netherlands reached a settlement with Moscow, according to Reuters. In 2013, Russian authorities seized a Dutch-flagged Greenpeace ship and arrested the 30 people onboard. Faiza Oulahsen, a Dutch Greenpeace activists who was one of the imprisoned, said the settlement was good news. “Justice has been done, now we can finally close this chapter,” she told Reuters.
The agreement should end years of legal battles that amounted from this incident. Russian agents captured the Arctic Sunrise in international waters in the midst of its members protesting against an oil platform. The 30 people onboard were detained in prisons for months and weren’t released until a few months before the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Originally, Russia denied a pay out to the Netherlands. In July 2017, an international arbitration panel demanded Moscow to pay the Dutch more than €5 million in damages for the incident in 2013. However, Russia did not recognise these findings. Stef Block, Dutch foreign minster, said the new settlement with Russia was important “because the Netherlands has successfully defended the importance of peaceful protest at sea, including in the Arctic.”
