Greenpeace asks Letta to call Putin over detained campaigner

(ANSA) – Rome, October 25 – The president of Greenpeace Italy on Friday called on Italian Premier Enrico Letta to put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release an Italian member of a group of Greenpeace activists facing hooliganism charges in Russia after staging a protest at a Russian Arctic offshore platform last month.

Letta now has to ” send out a strong signal”, said Ivan Novelli, asking the premier to call Putin.

Novelli was speaking at a press conference with the parents of Italian activist Cristian D’Alessandro, who was among 30 environmentalists arrested on a ship on September 19 after two of the campaigners tried to climb Gazprom’s Prirazlomnaya platform, Russia’s first offshore Arctic oil platform.

Russia on Wednesday dropped piracy charges against the 30 activists and replaced them with a lesser offense, hooliganism, thus cutting the maximum jail sentence they could face from 15 to seven years. Thanking Foreign Minister Emma Bonino and her staff for their support since D’Alessandro’s arrest, the president of Greenpeace Italy said November 24, the time limit of the group’s preventive detention measure, will be key in the case. On November 26, Novelli said, ”an EU-Russia summit has been scheduled and we hope the problem will be solved by then”.

He also stressed hooliganism charges were ”groundless and defamatory to Greenpeace”.

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