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Bandero seized near Iceland
Icelandic coast guards and police special forces seized the anti-whaling protest vessel Bandero, operated by a group founded by Paul Watson, after the crew of the whaling ship Hvalur 9 said their safety was under threat.
“The Icelandic Coast Guard said Bandero ignored instructions to leave Icelandic waters”
The Icelandic Coast Guard said Bandero ignored instructions to leave Icelandic waters and later failed to comply with an order to stop its engines, and coast guards and the police special forces unit, the Viking Squad, boarded the ship around midnight on Thursday.
The Captain Paul Watson Foundation confirmed the seizure and said the vessel’s 21 crew members were being detained on board without their phones, while police took over the investigation after the Bandero arrived in Reykjavik on Friday.
AP reported that Watson was not aboard, and that police have taken charge of the investigation after the Coast Guard and Viking Squad detained the crew around midnight on Thursday.
Deportation sought, phones withheld
Icelandic national broadcaster RUV reported that police will seek to deport the crew and ban them from returning to Iceland, framing the seizure as an immigration and re-entry issue after the Bandero arrived in Reykjavik.
The Captain Paul Watson Foundation acknowledged the seizure and said the 21 crew members were being held on board without access to their phones, while the BBC-style account in the AP report also said the crew were detained without their phones.
In a separate account, 20 Minutes said the police requested expulsion and a ban on return to Iceland for 21 activists detained in Reykjavik, and it quoted police spokesman Gunnar Runar Sveinbjornsson saying the activists were accused of violations of international maritime law and endangering maritime safety.
20 Minutes also reported that one of the French passengers, Lucien Richardson, described a state of stress aboard, saying, "No one understands why we are not being released, he testified."
Whaling fight and legal stakes
The seizure places Bandero and its crew at the centre of a police investigation in a country that, along with Norway and Japan, still practises commercial whaling and sets annual quotas for fin whales and minke whales.
“Iceland remains one of the few nations, alongside Norway and Japan, that continues to engage in commercial whaling”
The Independent said Iceland sets annual quotas for fin whales and minke whales and that it exports most of its whale meat to Japan, while it also described the hunt as increasingly contentious in Iceland where whale meat is now rarely eaten.
The Independent and AP both tied the confrontation to Paul Watson’s history, with AP saying he was imprisoned in Greenland for five months in 2024 after being arrested on a Japanese warrant over charges of obstructing a whaling ship in 2010 and with The Independent quoting Watson saying, "I have to make sure that I don’t land in Iceland or another country where Interpol might try to have me arrested again."
The Maritime Executive added that the campaign was named “Operation 86,” and it said the group asserted that its combined efforts had helped slow the pace of the hunt while it documented violations being committed by the whaling company.