Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg: The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic 30

TWENTY-SEVEN

‘Russell? Colin Russell?’

‘That’s me, fella.’

‘You come now.’

Colin – the 59-year-old Australian radio operator – stands up in a holding cell on the ground floor of St Petersburg’s Kalininsky District Court, where his lawyers are about to argue for his release on bail, and the Russian state will petition for his continued detention on a charge of hooliganism. It is the morning of Monday 18 November and seven of the crew have been brought to two courthouses in white avtozaks with blue stripes down the bonnet and flashing blue lights on the roof.

Colin puts his hands behind his back and turns around so the guard can cuff him. Then he steps out of the cell and he’s led away by three young officers in starched blue uniforms and fur hats. As they round a corner and approach the courtroom, a crowd of journalists raises cameras and microphones, and the air is filled with clicking and questions and shouts from supporters.

In the Arctic 30 campaign hubs in Moscow, Copenhagen, London and Amsterdam, and on laptops around the world, nervous colleagues, friends and family are watching the live video link broadcasting from the courthouse.

Two days ago there were demonstrations in 263 cities in forty-three countries around the world, calling for the release of the crew. In India there were thirty hours of protests across thirty cities. In Germany, huge lantern-lit marches to Russian consulates took place in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Bonn and Leipzig. More than thirty thousand Russians have submitted official complaints to the authorities against the jailing of the Arctic 30, putting themselves at risk of retribution.

Colin smiles. He’s still wearing the battered blue sweatshirt he had on when the ship was seized nine weeks ago. His grey hair is combed back, he’s wearing a thick beard and steel-rimmed glasses that rest on the end of his nose.

‘It’s all good,’ he says to the supporters, who are jostling with journalists in the hallway. ‘All good. Hello, everybody.’

The guards direct him through a door and a moment later he’s being uncuffed and locked in a cage in the courtroom. A female judge in a black robe is sitting in a huge leather high-backed throne behind a table on a raised platform, the Russian flag draped from a pole to her side. She is young, late thirties maybe, with tied-back dyed blonde hair and black thick-framed spectacles. In the corner a bank of TV cameras is facing the cage, maybe twenty-five journalists. There’s a row of spider plants along the wall below a broad window. A young female guard all in black, long hair under a baseball cap, stands in the very middle of the courtroom, between the media and the prisoner.

The campaign hubs have people stationed at court using Skype to keep them updated on the multiple simultaneous hearings.

The prosecutor claims there was a violent attack on the oil platform and that Colin should be held for at least three more months while the investigation continues. He says Colin needs to remain in jail because he could flee Russia and escape justice.

The judge looks up. She folds the file closed and announces a recess while she considers her judgement, then she leaves the courtroom. She retires to her chambers, where normally in the course of Russian justice – such as it is – a judge might check their emails or perhaps call Moscow to find out what the ruling in their hearing should be. Thirty minutes later she’s back.

She’s mumbling through the words in barely audible Russian. Thousands of miles away, on every continent bar Antarctica, families and campaigners are staring at their screens. It’s coming. Any moment now.

Colin shrugs and shakes his head as hearts sink in cities across the world. He gets to his feet and makes a V sign for the cameras, which by now are clustered around the cage. And he says, ‘Thank you to the world for coming to our cause. I want to thank you. Everybody around the world, thank you, thank you. You’re all beautiful people.’ His face breaks into a grin. ‘I love you all. I love everybody. I am not a criminal.’

The fur hats cuff Colin’s wrists and lead him out, and as he’s taken down the corridor, with supporters clapping as he passes, he says, ‘Thank you, everybody. You’re all good. All good.’

At SIZO-5 Sini is in a meeting room waiting for a guard to take her back to her cell. There’s a little window in the door and she can see Alex in her purple ski jacket going into a meeting room with her own lawyer. Sini waves at her and Alex waves back. Then Sini sees that Alex is crying. Alex’s lawyer comes to the window and shows Sini three fingers and mouths the words, ‘Three months. Colin. Three months.’

Alex wipes her eyes. Sini is making a shape with her hands. Alex squints to see better. Sini has made a heart with her fingers and she’s mouthing the words, ‘I love you.’ Sini quickly scribbles a note and gives it to the translator, who walks through to the other room and passes it to Alex. It says, It will be okay. Be strong. I love you.

Dima is watching the television news. He stares at the screen, at pictures of Colin. He shakes his head as the reporter explains the Greenpeace prisoners are staying in jail, then he sits down and writes a letter to his son Lev on the Pacific island of Vanuatu.

Dima has put off this moment for as long as he could, but now he knows it’s at least three more months, and possibly years in jail. He knows Lev will take the letter well, he’s a good kid, he has some of his grandfather inside him, and a lot of his great-grandfather and namesake, the famous dissident Lev Kopelev.

As he holds the pen above a sheet of paper, Dima’s mind slips back many years to when Lev was just a kid, maybe thirteen. The family was living in Sweden and one night there was a power outage. Lev couldn’t play computer games so he disappeared outside with his friends. At 2 a.m. he still hadn’t returned. Dima was frantic. Then at 3 a.m. bang bang bang on the door. Two burly policemen stood there with skimpy little Lev between them. Anitta broke into tears, Dima asked what was going on. The cops said they found him on the roof of his school, they said Lev had talked back to them, some wiseguy stuff. Dima asked Lev, ‘Did you? Did you speak back to the officers?’ And Lev said, ‘Well, I just said to them that as long as police violence is portrayed as justice then the justice of the proletariat is going to look like violence.’

Dima smiles at the memory. He bends over the paper and starts to write.

In the cell next door, Pete Willcox opens his diary and pulls the lid off his pen.

In the Room of Doom the campaigners are chewing their lips and staring into the middle distance, their eyes are red and wet. When they try to smile their lips quiver and they fight back tears. Nobody is saying much. Then a Skype message lands from St Petersburg.

Katya Zaspa is the ship’s 37-year-old doctor from Moscow.

Mads Christensen unmutes the video link from Copenhagen. ‘Did you guys just see that?

Ben Ayliffe looks up. ‘Jan’s Skype message?’

‘He says Katya’s lawyer’s been told she’ll get bail.’ Christensen leans back in his chair and runs his hands through his hair. ‘Holy shit, if that’s true…’

There’s no livestream to Katya’s hearing so the campaigners stare at their screens, dozens of them across the globe, waiting for an update on the Skype group. A minute passes, then another. Then…

The bunker erupts. In Copenhagen Mads Christensen throws his head back and thrusts his arms into the air in triumph.

By early evening, Russian TV news is running images of Denis smiling, being led out of the courtroom to cheers. It’s hard to make out what’s happened, but most of the activists understand that Katya and Denis got bail and the prosecutor isn’t opposing release for the Brazilian activist Ana Paula Maciel, but her case resumes tomorrow. At SIZO-5 Faiza is told by her lawyer that the Russians will be freed as soon as the bail money is paid. ‘But if we’re getting out then why did they keep Colin?’ she asks. ‘Are they going to make a distinction? Because it doesn’t make sense that they picked out Colin.’

‘Look,’ her lawyer replies, ‘the phone call didn’t come through in time. Colin’s judge didn’t get the call. In Russia we call it telefonnoye pravo. Telephone justice. And the phone call came late. Soon enough we’ll know either way. It all depends on Ana Paula tomorrow morning.’