Peter Bethune.
Prime Minister John Key says the Government can not
intervene in Japan's legal processes to help anti-whaling
campaigner Peter Bethune.
The Australian and New Zealand Green parties have called for
their governments to intervene over the case.
Bethune, 44, was arrested on Friday. He was captain of the
protest organisation Sea Shepherd's high-tech powerboat that
was sliced in two in a collision with the Shonan Maru II in
January.
In mid-February he climbed aboard the Japanese ship before
dawn from a jet ski with the stated intention of making a
citizen's arrest of captain Hiroyuki Komiya for what he said
was the attempted murder of his six crew.
Bethune also presented the Japanese whalers with a $US3
million ($NZ4.3 million) bill for the futuristic
carbon-and-kevlar trimaran Ady Gil, which sank in the icy
waters a day after the collision on January 6.
Mr Key said his Foreign Minister Murray McCully had kept in
contact with the Japanese ambassador and diplomats were
playing their part in Japan.
"The situation is...he's going to be charged across a range
of different sort of breaches of the law, potentially," Mr
Key told TVNZ's Breakfast programme.
"Peter Bethune is obviously a person who cares deeply about
what he's doing, he's also a person who made it quite clear
when he got on board that boat that he didn't want to be
taken off, he did want to be taken to Japan. So clearly he
has thought all this through and has thought the exposure
that he will get for this warrants his activities."
Other than consular support there was little the Government
could do, Mr Key said.
"We can't actually interfere in the Japanese legal process."
Sea Shepherd, which has called Bethune the first New
Zealander taken as a "prisoner of war" to Japan since World
War 2, is working on his legal defence.
The group declared an end to this season's three-month
pursuit of Japanese harpoon ships in Antarctic waters on
February 27, saying it had been the most successful campaign
yet because it had stopped all whaling on 33 days.
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