Suspended jail term for whaling protester

A New Zealand activist who boarded a Japanese whaling ship in an attempt to stop a whale hunt is sentenced to two years in prison suspended for five years.

TOKYO // A New Zealand activist who boarded a Japanese whaling ship in an attempt to stop a whale hunt was today sentenced to two years in prison suspended for five years. Pete Bethune, a former captain of a high-tech boat operated by hardline anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, was indicted in April on several criminal counts, including carrying a knife when he boarded the vessel in the Antarctic in what the activists said was an attempt to make a citizen's arrest.

Regular attempts by the Sea Shepherd group to block the annual whale hunt have sparked anger in Japan, where the government says whaling is an important cultural tradition. Japan, one of only three countries that now hunt whales, introduced scientific whaling to skirt a commercial whaling ban under a 1986 IWC moratorium, arguing it had a right to watch the whales' impact on its fishing industry. Australia, New Zealand and other nations want to ban all whaling. Anti-whalers see the hunting of the huge creatures as cruel and unnecessary, while the Japanese government says it is a valued cultural tradition no different from hunting other wild animals. Most of the meat from the hunt ends up on dinner tables.

* Reuters