WELLINGTON (AFP) – Conservation group Sea Shepherd said Thursday that activist Pete Bethune would be welcome on future Antarctic missions despite being handed a two-year suspended jail sentence in Japan.
Bethune was convicted in Tokyo of injuring a whaler by hurling a rancid butter stink bomb during the latest high-seas campaign by the US-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and of four other charges.
The judge said the court had suspended the jail term because Bethune had no criminal record in Japan, had apologised and paid for damage he caused, and because he had said he would join no more Antarctic missions.
But the group's leader, Paul Watson, told Radio New Zealand the pledge on future action was just a legal manoeuvre as Japanese judges would have been hesitant to release the 45-year-old New Zealander if he were to return to the Southern Ocean.
"I don't think he'll be going back this season, because I think he's going to be writing a book, which is good, but he's certainly welcome back in the future," Watson said.
Watson also vowed to return to Antarctic waters in the next whaling season to disrupt the expected Japanese hunt.
"We are not going to retreat. These people are poachers. They are targeting endangered whales in the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary and it's illegal," he said.
Sea Shepherd had said Bethune would not join its future actions after taking a bow and arrows on his Antarctic mission, contrary to Sea Shepherd's stance of "aggressive but non-violent direct action".
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has appealed for "cool heads" as the international community struggles to find a solution to the whaling issue and said he feared someone could be killed in the ongoing anti-whaling protests.
"We strongly believe the kind of actions we've seen will ultimately lead to a loss of life if we're not careful, so trying to find a solution which is acceptable is very important," Key said.
Japan hunts whales under a loophole in an international moratorium that allows killing of the sea mammals for what it calls "scientific research", although the meat is later sold openly in shops and restaurants.
The Sea Shepherd group has pursued and harassed Japanese whalers in Antarctic waters for years -- most recently in the 2009-2010 season, a campaign that both sides say reduced the Japanese cull by several hundred whales.
Bethune was captain of the group's futuristic carbon-and-kevlar powerboat, the trimaran Ady Gil, which sank after a January 6 collision with the Japanese fleet's security ship the Shonan Maru II.
He was arrested on February 15 when he boarded the Shonan Maru II from a jet ski, with the stated intention of making a citizen's arrest of its captain and presenting him with a three-million-dollar bill for the Ady Gil.