AFP: Russia must compensate Dutch over Greenpeace ship

Russia must compensate the Netherlands over the 2013 seizure of Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise ship during a protest against Arctic oil drilling, an international court ruled on Monday, according to AFP.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) "found that the Netherlands is entitled to compensation with interest for material damage to the Arctic Sunrise" and those who were onboard, the Hague-based body said in a statement, Yahoo! News reported with reference to AFP.

Russian commandoes seized the Dutch-flagged ship in September 2013 and detained the 30 Greenpeace activists and journalists onboard after a protest at an offshore oil rig owned by Russian state oil giant Gazprom.

Moscow's angry response to the protest, during which two Greenpeace activists had tried to scale the drilling platform, sparked an international outcry.

The activists – who became known as the "Arctic 30" – were initially accused of piracy, a charge later changed to hooliganism, and detained for two months before being bailed and then benefiting from a Kremlin-backed amnesty.

Russia handed the ship itself back last year.

In October 2013 the Netherlands hauled Moscow before the Hague-based PCA, a 117-nation body set up more than a century ago to arbitrate in disputes between countries, in protest at the seizure of the ship and its crew.

The Dutch asked the tribunal to rule that Russia had violated international maritime conventions.

It also asked for a ruling that Russia failed to comply with an order by the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which had ordered that Russia promptly release the ship and its crew.

Russia did not attend the Hamburg hearing, and did not take part in the PCA's arbitration either.

"Russia had failed to satisfy the 'promptness' of the requirements of the ITLOS," the PCA said in Monday's ruling.

This "amounted to a breach of Russia's obligations under the convention," it added.

Russia also has to pay back bail money raised by the Dutch to free the Arctic 30, the PCA said.

Findings made by the PCA are binding, but countries are entitled to ask, within a month, for a "correction" of an award – when it believes a mistake was made when working out the costs of compensation, for instance.

The latest PCA ruling is set to further cloud troubled Dutch-Russian relations in the wake of the MH17 air disaster last year, AFP wrote.

The passenger jet was shot down over Ukraine in July 2014 during heavy fighting between government forces and pro-Russian separatists. All 298 people onboard – the majority of them Dutch – were killed.