French President Macron will commit To secure the release of Canadian-American environmental activist Paul Watson, French public broadcaster Français reported. France informationHe decided to do so after a French journalist petitioned for his release.

It has now been signed more than 367,000 times, including actress Brigitte Bardot, who also defended Watson in an interview. The Parisian.

Danish authorities arrested 73-year-old Watson in Greenland yesterday at Japan’s request. Japan was looking for the founder of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF) for his methods of thwarting whaling.

Watson sailed his ship into Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, yesterday to refuel. He was traveling with a crew of 25 to the Kanji Maru, a large Japanese ship that processes whales caught by smaller vessels. He planned to take action there because Japan is ignoring an international whaling treaty.

Watson was a co-founder of Greenpeace. Unafraid of violent methods, such as ramming whalers and sealers, he was forced to leave the environmental organization that advocated nonviolence in the 1970s.

After his departure, he founded the more radical environmental organization Sea Shepherd, which took drastic measures to protect marine life. He also left the organization in 2022 because it wanted to cooperate more with governments.

Watson was arrested in Germany in 2012 at the request of Costa Rica and Japan after Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest. When he was released on bail, he fled. Costa Rica later dropped the high-profile international designation, but Japan did not.

For several months now, this international investigation request has been nowhere to be found on Interpol’s website, which is why Watson assumed that Japan had dropped it as well. Writes his institution On your website. The organization suspects that the message called red notice, It was made secret to frame Watson so he could be arrested.

Currently, Watson remains stuck in Greenland, an independent state within the Kingdom of Denmark. Denmark does not have an extradition treaty with Japan, so it is unclear whether it will extradite Watson. Since he is considered a flight risk after fleeing Germany, he cannot be released on bail, according to his foundation. According to the CPWF, the activist could face up to 15 years in prison in Japan.