Lawyers on deck for Kiwi anti-whaler

ANDREW GORRIE/The Dominion Post

WHALE WORDS: Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson delivers his message outside Parliament.

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The Sea Shepherd anti-whaling activists have hired lawyers to defend Kiwi Pete Bethune, who they say is being held as a "prisoner of war" in Tokyo after boarding a Japanese whaling ship.

The group was not expecting change out of $250,000 for legal costs, Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson said in Wellington yesterday.

On January 6, the New Zealand-flagged Ady Gil was involved in a collision with a Japanese whaling ship and later sank. The whalers and protesters blamed each other.

Mr Bethune boarded the Shonan Maru II from a jet ski to make a citizen's arrest of its captain on February 15. He was taken to Tokyo and arrested.

Mr Bethune was in good spirits when visited by New Zealand embassy staff at a detention centre in Tokyo on Thursday, a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman said.

Mr Watson conceded the loss of the $2 million Ady Gil was "a very significant economic loss" for Sea Shepherd which relied on donations.

"But I guess Pete and I would agree, ships are expendable, whales are not. It's worth putting those ships and ourselves in harm's way to protect them."

Pete Bethune was a national hero, he said. "He's a prisoner of war in Japan and we have to get him out of there," Mr Watson told an anti-whaling rally at Parliament yesterday. He was in Wellington to welcome the anti-whaling boat Steve Irwin, arriving from Hobart last night.

Labour's foreign affairs spokesman Chris Carter feared a Government compromise on whaling would allow commercial whaling to resume, albeit with a reduced quota.

A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully said New Zealand was working with other countries towards a diplomatic solution.

- © Fairfax NZ News