Eco warrior Peter Bethune fights for $500k

REUTERS

BATTLE SCARS: The Ady Gil with its bow shorn off after colliding with Shonan Maru.

DON SCOTT/Fairfax NZ

'EXTREMELY SAD': Peter Bethune is trying to recover costs for the boat that sank after being rammed by a Japanese whaler in 2010.

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New Zealand environmentalist Peter Bethune and Sea Shepherd are in a court battle in the USA fighting over $500,000 Bethune says he is owed by the anti-whaling group.

Bethune and Sea Shepherd have had a heated relationship in the two years since the Ady Gil, which Bethune captained, was rammed by a Japanese whaler in 2010.

Bethune had earlier sold the boat to Ady Gil, its namesake, who leased it to Sea Shepherd. While Gil paid Bethune $1 million, Bethune says he never received the $500,000 Sea Shepherd owed him and which was due by November, 2010.

The court case in Annapolis, Maryland, started yesterday and is expected to end tomorrow.

Bethune posted on his Facebook page that he was "nervous as hell" going into the trial.

"I'm worried I'll cock it all up. Its been such a long time to finally get this to court, and it breaks my heart to have to sue an organisation I loved so much."

Once close allies, the anti-whaling group and Bethune are now anything but.

The activist and Sea Shepherd made headlines in 2010 when the Ady Gill collided with a Japanese whaling fleet's security ship the Shonan Maru II, a collision which Bethune later said was deliberately planned by Sea Shepherd as a publicity stunt.

A month later, Bethune boarded the Japanese ship to demand compensation but was detained and taken to Japan for prosecution, where he was imprisoned for five months. He was sentenced to jail for two years, but the sentence was suspended for five years.

During the trial Sea Shepherd banned Bethune from being part of the organisation, which the group's leader, Paul Watson, later said was done to appease Japanese judges.

Sea Shepherd paid $500,000 in legal fees on the case, Watson said.

Over the following months Bethune says he was "squeezed away" from organisation before he quit, and Sea Shepherd has said he was fired for laying the blame on Watson when questioned by Japanese authorities during his incarceration.

Bethune said he was then told he may not get the money he was owed for the boat because of the cost of his legal fees.
Bethune has previously said that he was "extremely sad" to bring the case to court "against an organisation that I loved and a man that I had great respect for".

"I sacrificed a year of my life to Paul and the SSCS, including five months locked up in a maximum security prison in Japan resulting from actions I took under the captaincy of Paul.

"He then expelled me from SSCS whilst I was in jail and their treatment of me publicly and privately since then has been a disgrace. The Japanese at least treated me with dignity and respect. Sea Shepherd in contrast has treated me like a used condom, throwing me away once I'd served its purpose.”

However, Watson blamed Bethune for the boarding. There was documentation that states that Watson advised Bethune not toboard the boat, he said in a statement.

Watson was arrested in Germany in May. Germany last week ordered that Watson be extradited to Japan, but he left the country before that could happen, he says.

It is not known where Watson is currently based but he says he is "in a place on this planet where I feel comfortable, a safe place far away from the scheming nations who have turned a blind eye to the exploitation of our oceans".

- © Fairfax NZ News