Video: Canadian Greenpeace activist Alexandre Paul appears in St Petersburg court for his bail hearing.
TORONTO – Two Canadians granted bail in Russia following their arrest as part of a Greenpeace protest the Arctic are still incarcerated, a media spokesperson for Greenpeace Canada confirmed.
“We don’t know the conditions of the release yet,” Diego Cormier said Thursday.
“They’re still in prison. They’ve been granted bail.”
Cormier says if Alexandre Paul of Montreal and Paul Ruzycki of Port Colborne, Ont., aren’t released by Friday, they will have to spend another weekend behind bars.
He says that Greenpeace Canada is currently in the process of paying their bail, which has been set at two million rubles per person (around $63,000 says Cormier).
Paul’s mother Nicole Paul released a statement through Greenpeace on Thursday welcoming the news.
“I’m so happy that my son is going to be out of jail soon, and I hope he’ll be allowed to come home to us,” she said. “I’m so proud of him and everything he stands for.”
Although he doesn’t know how long it will take before all of the documentation is in order, Cormier said that it took a day or two for Brazilian activist Ana Paula Alminhana Maciel to walk free.
Maciel, who was released late Wednesday, was the first one to walk free.
She was followed on Thursday by three Russian citizens and a crew member from New Zealand.
Bail now has been granted this week to 26 of the people who were arrested in September on the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise.
The bail hearings were to continue Friday.
VIDEO: Released Greenpeace activist talks about captivity in Russia
The state ITAR-Tass news agency carried a statement from Russia’s Federal Migration Service as saying that those granted bail can’t leave Russia until criminal proceedings against them end.
But the agency also quoted a well-connected Russian lawyer, Genri Reznik, as saying that the Russian law doesn’t ban them from leaving Russia pending their trial. He added that charges against them will likely be dropped under an upcoming amnesty marking the 20th anniversary of Russia’s constitution.
All of those detained were initially charged with piracy, but investigators later changed the charge to hooliganism. Although a lesser charge, hooliganism carries a potential sentence of seven years. Piracy’s maximum is 15.
READ MORE: Russia drops piracy charges against Greenpeace activists
“Our case is not closed yet,” said activist Andrei Allakhverdov, one of the three Russians released Thursday. “We will fight for the case to be closed and for us to be found not guilty. I will go and take a shower now.”
The two other Russians freed were ship doctor Yekaterina Zaspa and photographer Denis Sinyakov. David John Haussmann of New Zealand also walked free.
The 30 were arrested in mid-September after the Arctic Sunrise, entered Arctic waters despite Russian warnings. Some of the activists tried to scale an offshore drilling platform owned by the state natural gas giant Gazprom.
On Wednesday, three Greenpeace protesters scaled Montreal’s Biosphere structure in support of the detained activists. Montreal police said the three, who climbed the giant globe-like structure to hang a banner, will be in court in February on mischief charges.
Greenpeace contends Arctic drilling poses potentially catastrophic environmental dangers. But Russia bristles at criticism of its oil and gas industry, which is the backbone of the country’s economy.
– With files from The Associated Press
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