Tokyo, Japan — Japanese police have arrested two Greenpeace activists for exposing a whale meat scandal involving the government-sponsored whaling programme. The two activists, Junichi Sato, 31, and Toru Suzuki, 41, are being investigated for allegedly stealing a box of whale meat which they presented as evidence.

The box of the most expensive cuts of whale meat had been illicitly removed by crew of the Nisshin Maru, the whaling factory ship, following this year's Southern Ocean whale hunt. Its contents were marked "cardboard" and it was shipped to a private address. Tracked by our investigators, it was intercepted and turned over to the Public Prosecutor in Tokyo, as evidence of wide-scale corruption at the heart of the whaling operation in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

We requested an investigation into the scandal, and the Public Prosecutor agreed that there was sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. In light of evidence that the operators of the whaling operation were aware of the scandal and did nothing, we asked that the investigation not focus on crew, but on the bureaucrats who run the whaling programme at public expense. Instead, Japanese police arrested the Greenpeace activists in a show of force, occupying the Greenpeace offices with 40 police for more than 10 hours while they seized computers, documents, and cell phones.

The Japanese whaling programme costs the Japanese taxpayer 500 million yen per year (around 4.7 million US dollars).

UPDATE 21 June 2008 The Tokyo District Prosecutor Office announced that it has been unable to find evidence of the embezzlement and that the investigation into crew and whaling officials has been dropped.

Clearly this has been a difficult investigation for the Prosecutor's Office when the level of corruption runs so deep in the whaling industry, an industry backed by powerful forces within the government. However, some questions remain unanswered:
If Kyodo Senpaku, the company that operates the whaling ships, was legally giving out whale meat to the crew then why did they change their story three times in almost as many days?
Why did the crew lie about the contents of the boxes containing the meat, claiming that they contained cardboard when in fact they were stuffed full of prime whale meat cuts worth tens of thousands of dollars?
And why, before the scandal was exposed, did an official of the Japanese Fisheries agency claim that whale meat was never given to crew?
Read the full dossier of evidence, and decide for yourself

UPDATE 22 June 2008 At a hearing this morning, the "Tokyo Two" have been ordered held another ten days without charge. We are appealing that decision tomorrow. In the meantime, our lawyer believes that the number of people who have written demanding their release -- nearly 50,000 at this writing -- could help their case considerably.

UPDATE 23 June 2008 Our appeal has been rejected, and Junichi and Toru have been ordered to spend a further 9 days in jail without charge. Under Japanese law, they can be held for up to 23 days without charge. More than 100,000 people have now taken our global cyberaction demanding their release. Please, if you have not already, take action and encourage others to do so as well: http://www.greenpeace.org/tokyo-two