Global police organisation Interpol has removed its most-wanted designation for the anti-whaling activist and founder of the Sea Shepherd conservation group, Paul Watson. Watson was wanted in Japan over an encounter with a whaling ship in 2010. Interpol had issued a “red notice” at Japan’s request for the arrest of the Canadian-American Watson, 74, who is known for his daring tactics, including disrupting and confronting whaling ships on the high seas.
Interpol has now decided that the notice was “disproportionate”, Watson’s Paris-based lawyer William Julie said on Tuesday. “Finally I am free,” Watson said in a post on social media by the Captain Paul Watson Foundation. “The Japanese whalers have been after me for 14 years ever since I was first detained in Frankfurt, Germany in May 2012,” Watson said. “It has been an incredible pursuit by a very powerful nation using unlimited resources but finally I am free.”
A spokesperson for Interpol confirmed to the AFP news agency that the organisation’s Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (CCF) had deleted the arrest notice for Watson. “The CCF decision was made in light of new facts, including the refusal by the Kingdom of Denmark to extradite Mr Watson,” the spokesperson said. Watson was arrested and detained in Greenland in July 2024 on a more than decade-old Japanese arrest warrant, which accused him of causing damage to a whaling ship and injuring a whaler.
Watson’s lawyer said that the CCF considered that Interpol’s red notice “did not meet Interpol’s standards, citing the disproportionate nature of the charges… the considerable passage of time since the alleged facts, Denmark’s refusal to extradite him, and the fact that several other countries declined to act on Japan’s arrest or extradition requests”. Lamya Essemlali, the president of Sea Shepherd France, hailed the “good news that this notice was finally cancelled”, but noted that Watson could still be arrested and sent to Japan for prosecution.