MOSCOW, October 21 (RIA Novosti) – The Netherlands on Monday filed a lawsuit in an international maritime court against Russia’s seizure of a Dutch-registered Greenpeace icebreaker.
The Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea will begin reviewing the case in the coming two or three weeks, the Netherlands government said on its website.
Amsterdam says it is willing to suspend the lawsuit if the Greenpeace ship and crew are released.
The Netherlands had earlier announced it was initiating arbitration proceedings under the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea in the hope of prompting a diplomatic solution.
Russian authorities seized the Greenpeace ship in mid-September after activists tried to scale an oil rig in the Arctic in protest against offshore drilling in the area. All 30 people on board were detained and later charged with piracy, which is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
Moscow had not commented on the lawsuit as of Monday evening.
Russian diplomats had earlier accused the Dutch government of failing to stop what they called the illegal activities of the Greenpeace ship.
