On Thin Ice: Putin v Greenpeace (2024) s01e03 Episode Script

1
This program me contains some
strong language.
I expected to be spending 48 hours
in a detention centre,
and then to be released.
I grabbed, like, a toothbrush,
some pants and socks,
and that was basically it.
I didn't imagine it would go
so wrong.
It was an incredibly daring mission.
It needed to be clone.
But the plan, I think
you could say, went to shit.
GUNFIRE
High drama on the high seas tonight.
Russian forces have seized
control of a Greenpeace ship.
It felt like being in the middle
of a James Bond film.
15 years stuck in a Russian prison.
How did I get here?
Dealing with Putin, this was
a different game altogether.
It's like a ticking time bomb here.
How the hell
are we going to get them out?
The whole situation is overwhelming.
It's a lot to process
in that moment.
Never in my right mind would
I have imagined all of this.
We've just been boarded by the FSB.
They're holding
the crew at gunpoint,
they've taken control of the ship.
And I was like, all of this
to tackle a bunch
of Greenpeace hippies?!
Really?!
We were all taken down to the bottom
of the ship, put in the mess.
So, they searched us to make
sure that we didn't have anything
on us, like mobile phones, footage,
like SD cards, that kind of thing.
I knew they were going to take all
the phones, all the radios,
but I managed to hide my phone.
So, I started to film
what was happening.
OK, uh, right, uh, we have
a suggestion that we can be polite,
if it helps us
But in the middle
of the Arctic Ocean,
there was no connection.
I couldn't make any phone call,
and they had disconnected
all the satellite phones.
So, there was absolutely no
connection with the outside world.
Very soon after the FSB
took over our ship,
they wanted us to sail to Russia,
but we refused.
And that's when the FSB decided
to tow our ship to Murmansk
the closest port in Russia.
We were looking at five days
on the ship, with armed commandos.
We were all in the mess,
and one of the clever moves
we'd made before we set off
was we had run a phone from
the radio room
down into the mess.
We'd managed to wire it directly
to the satellite link.
Thank God, they hadn't noticed.
So, we still had means of contacting
the outside world.
Ancl so, you've got some officers
keeping an eye on us,
but none actually
in the mess itself.
So, the phone,
it was just above, like,
the coffee station, where we would
make our coffee and tea.
We grabbed, like, a dishcloth,
and hung it over it,
so they wouldn't notice it.
Ancl then we took the cord,
you could kind of extend it
through to the actual
kitchen itself,
completely out of sight
from any of the officers.
Having access to the phone,
just absolutely amazing.
Getting any kind of news
out from the ship,
it's a really important thing.
We didn't know how long we were
going to be seized for, um, but we
sure as hell knew that someone was
going to be interested in the story.
Ancl so, everybody was surrounding
me, and they were looking
down the corridor to make sure
that none of the guards came in.
It was a little bit like a scene
from the Great Escape,
where everybody was trying to act
incredibly normal
while trying to hide what
we were really doing.
And I thought, "Fuck, fuck,
what do I do? What do I do? OK,"
so I rang Ben Stewart.
Ben Stewart is the press officer
at Greenpeace UK.
I think, probably, it was about 3am
or 4am in the UK at the time.
I think he was at a nightclub!
My phone started ringing and
I looked at it, and it had, like,
this kind of 15-digit number or
something that I didn't recognise.
It was like You know,
it was like a bar code or something.
I just heard Frank trying to convey
information as quickly as he could.
"Ben, Ben, mate,
how's it going? All right?
"Yeah, we've just been boarded.
We're all under arrest,
"guns everywhere. It's gone nuts!"
And he said there's about 20
of them, they're special forces,
they were heavily armed.
You know, they were everywhere.
Like, you know, shit was going down.
And he sounded, like,
deeply adrenalized,
and I was quite deeply drunk,
and sobered up very, very quickly.
And he said, "We're being towed
to Murmansk,
"it's ging to be five days."
And then he said, "I've got to go,
I've got to go," and hung up.
And I kind of thought,
"What was that?" It sounded bad,
it sounded serious.
As soon as Frank hung up,
I just thought we have to
get the story out.
And I thought, like, this is going
to run everywhere.
High drama on the high seas today.
Russian security forces have seized
control of a Greenpeace ship.
Now, a Greenpeace ship has been
stormed by armed Russian guards
in the Arctic Sea.
It was a big international story
and, from our point of view,
a peaceful action that was met
with brutal violent force.
This was a gross
overreaction by the Russians,
but also what they've done
is not legal.
Greenpeace says its boat
was in international waters
and has been seized illegally.
You're just not allowed to board
a ship in international waters,
like the Russians did.
They had no right to be on our ship.
Very early on, we found out
that it was going to be
the Russian Investigative Committee
that was in charge of the case.
And I knew enough about Russia
to know
that if it's the Investigative
Committee that's after you,
then that's of some concern.
This is not a local cop
in a Columbo jacket.
They're like a kind
of political police force.
It felt like it was
coming from the top, from Moscow.
I was a member
of Russian Parliament
and a deputy chairman
of the committee for security.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
I was involved in the protest
against the falsified elections.
Yeah, this was the feeling of 2012,
of, like, the freedoms
we were enjoying are going away.
There were big protests.
I mean, all around Russia.
We hoped it's possible to find
a way to fight it.
Police have moved in and cleared
the crowd out.
They're not tolerating any of it.
The parliament published
so many repressive laws. There was,
like, a big amount of people
arrested for throwing a lemon
touching the cop's shoulder.
To risk ending up in prison,
where torture is like
an unfortunate part of normality,
it made me and people around me,
like, think twice, or more,
before you do an action.
We were under tow to Murmansk,
and we still had the phone.
After talking to Ben Stewart,
we tried another number
and halfway through
that conversation
.. | just heard the physical
line being plunked out
of the server in the bridge.
They'd found it. They'd seen a light
flashing and they'd pulled it.
And that was that.
That was the last phone call we had.
We were very cut off then.
To make matters worse,
at this point, we were still
missing two of our crew.
Sini and Crusoe,
who'd climbed the rig,
were still being
held by the Russian coastguard.
I did worry about how
they were coping.
On the coastguard vessel,
they separated me and Crusoe.
I'm in a cabin with several men
but at least nothing had happened
to me during the night.
At that point,
I was really worried about Crusoe.
I didn't know where they're keeping
him, are they just beating him up?
There were windows or portholes, but
they were all closed, so there was
nothing I could see, and not much
I could hear. In what direction
the ship is going, or what time
of the day it is, I had no clue.
But then one of the soldiers
that had been guarding me,
he said something like "home"
to me,
and then they brought me
to the deck
and then Crusoe was there as well.
He looked OK.
I was really happy to see him.
And then they started driving us
into the Arctic Sunrise.
I was, like, really relieved to see
that it's floating,
but when the coastguard boat drove
alongside the ship,
I was a bit like,
"Why is nobody on the deck?"
And I was like,
"This is really odd."
You could just, like, sense this
feeling of, like,
not everything is OK on this ship,
or it's not like
it's supposed to be.
And then we come to the main
accommodation deck
there's soldiers
with guns everywhere.
And then I was like,
"OK, the ship is arrested."
And then we are
brought into the mess room
and every one of us
is sitting in the mess room.
Oh, mate, it's so good to see you!
When Simi and Crusoe came
back into the mess,
everyone just went to hug them,
and to check that they were OK.
And there was, like,
big cheers and joy.
I could now see that
everyone is OK,
which was absolutely wonderful.
I was so, so relieved
to get them back,
cos during the action I'd left
them there in a situation
that deteriorated, and I wish
I'd been there with them.
We were all just relieved to be back
together again, united as the 30.
It felt like we could do this,
because we were in it together.
After Sini and Crusoe came back,
you know, the atmosphere
was a bit more calm.
I've still got this GoPro,
so we filmed with it
which was great,
cos there was nothing else to do.
We were stuck in there for hours.
Like, all night,
and sitting around, bored.
Every clay for five clays
in the same room.
A lot of games are being played -
Uno, Scrabble, Patience -
anything to pass the time.
I remember, actually,
we were playing charades,
and I remember the commandos
were looking at us like,
"OK, we have guns here,
and you're playing charades."
But, you know, what to do other
than, uh, trying to kill time?
Yeah, the atmosphere on board
while we were being towed was OK.
For me, it was a few clays off work,
really, so I was quite happy.
We were reading books
and watching movies.
And what can you do,
you know?
You're, you're basically,
uh, on a cruise.
You know, now it feels, like, OK,
we can just sit around
and drink beer and relax.
You know, this is about to be over.
We'll be locked up
for a couple of days in Russia,
and then eventually thrown
out of the country.
And soon
we can all go home.
After Frank told me that they
were being towed to Russia,
the general assumption was still
that they would get to Murmansk,
and they would probably be released
and kicked out the country.
However, one of things that was
making us think this might be
more serious was this kind of
Russian state line.
There were these stories coming
out in Russia about how
they needed to raid our ship because
they hadn't been sure
we weren't trying to blow up
an oil rig.
The Russians are saying
that the pod was a bomb.
So, we were determined
to fight this.
This claim that they say it's an
unexploded device or something like
that, it's incredibly disingenuous
of the Russian authorities.
They know exactly what it was,
it's a survival pod,
it's something that
keeps people warm.
The pod was not a bomb.
It didn't look like a bomb,
but if you're sitting in Volgograd
watching TV that evening,
you were being told that
it might have been a bomb.
If I think about 2013,
most of the media were, like,
financed directly from the state.
But growing up in the '90s,
we had lots of independent
media organisations.
But when Putin came to power,
it was taken over.
From then on, if you turn
on the news,
it's justit's pure propaganda.
The problem is that they're really
good in what they are doing.
Like, my parents are watching
this and they believe it.
Yeah.
We're in a story war here
against the Russians.
Everything ratcheted up a level.
There was just this kind of growing
sense that this is different.
When we were being towed to
Murmansk, we had no idea
what was being said and done
about us and about the situation.
But all together in that mess room,
we were quite calm.
But the closer, when we got to
Murmansk, something was changing.
They pulled out all
the communication lines,
but there was one phone that
they had missed - Faiza's.
But we were out at sea,
and you couldn't get a signal.
So, we hid it in a bag of rice,
we also hid it under a bed,
we changed the hiding
location all the time.
just waiting to get
closer to land.
My emotions,
they were all over the place.
I've got a GoPro camera with
footage of an illegal boarding.
This is the only copy
of that footage.
They're probably going to search
the whole ship.
I needed to get that footage
somewhere safe
but how?
I remember, as we were coming in
to Murmansk, I was getting a bit
more anxious about it -
if they were going to deploy
a helicopter and 20 soldiers.
I was apprehensive about what
was going to happen next.
I remember one of the commandos,
he was the one whose
English was the best.
I went to him to ask him, "Are we
being charged with anything,
"if so, what are the charges?"
And he just kept telling, "I cannot
tell you what the charges are,
"but I can tell you that
you are detained."
It was quite strange.
Where's a good stashing place?
You know, maybe
I need to downsize it a bit,
take the memory card out
and hide that.
But now what the hell
do I do with it?
I kept asking the commando,
"What are the charges?"
And I could tell every time
I would ask the question,
he would be like
SIGHS
He seemed very stressed out.
It was, for me,
one of the first signs, like,
there could be
a lot of attention for this.
We were unarmed,
we were cooperating.
For me, there didn't seem any other
reason to be stressed out,
other than strings were being
pulled from high above.
Suddenly, there were a little
flash of inspiration.
I could stash the SD
card in the insole of my shoe.
Cut a little slot right in the side
and poked it in.
Quite a good little spot.
All I know is it's
significant footage.
Whatever happens,
that needs to be seen.
I remember, the night before
we arrived in Murmansk,
we finally got signal.
And the first thing I did
was I called my mum and dad.
Before going,
I hadn't told them about the plan.
They were astounded to hear from me.
I think one of them said,
like, "You didn't tell me
"you were going to
an oil rig in Russia."
just to hear their voices,
it was reassuring.
My clad told me that he'd clone
several interviews with journalists.
joining us now from Exeter
is Cliff Harris.
Very good morning to you,
thanks very much for joining us.
At that point,
I was a bit taken aback
because we didn't
really have insight
into what was going on outside.
Was she concerned about the trip
they were doing?
Not, not at all.
She wanted to see polar bears,
and she was excited about the trip.
But we never thought this would
actually happen to this extent.
They're even interviewing
my parents.
Wow! This is really a big deal.
It's like being in this
kind of strange dream.
It doesn't really feel like it's
happening to you, everything
that's kind of like
going on around you.
It was really hard to sleep
that night.
Anxiously thinking about what
was going to happen to us.
Approaching Murmansk
it felt somehow ghostly.
It was very military.
It's very industrial.
When we arrived in Murmansk,
they told us that they
were going to take us
to a detention centre.
I grabbed like, a toothbrush,
some pants and socks,
and that was basically it.
We didn't take much with us at all.
It felt like we were going to
go into a cell for 48 hours,
and then we'll be released.
We were then taken off the ship.
There were police everywhere,
I think there were clogs barking.
Soldiers.
Er, with guns.
It was It was heavy.
The level of officers
surrounding us was
It was quite extreme.
I remember boarding this,
like, old Soviet kind of bus.
Like, this real rickety thing.
When we got to the detention centre,
there were just, like,
lights and cameras everywhere.
It really hit me that
it was quite serious
when I saw how many photographers
were around that bus.
And it was like, "Oh, God, this is a
bit This is a bit much, surely."
And it was quite intimidating.
So, then they took us into court,
and we're kind of like
walking up the stairs
of this building,
talking about what we're going to
do when we get back onto the ship.
You know, we can't
wait for a shower, all of that,
and to kind of call our families.
Ancl it's still very, at this stage,
kind of taking in the situation,
and just making light of it.
I remember being in the court.
We were all in different cells,
waiting cells, next to each other.
So, we could hear the others talk.
And I think it was Paul,
one of the first crew members
to come down from the court
back to the waiting cell
and then he started to shout,
"I got two months!"
And I was like, "This is not funny,
guys. This is not funny."
And then another one came down.
"I got two months!"
And that's actually
the first time, uh,
I heard of the piracy charges.
If you're found guilty of piracy
it means 10 to 15 years
in prison.
And that's when it started
to kick in
that they were going to get us.
I'd already been telling myself
how do I get through
48 hours in a prison cell,
not like15 years.
And I just kept thinking
about my mum, and my poor mum,
and what have I clone to my mum?
Well, the panic was
starting to grow.
I mean, I was terrified.
A court in the Russian Arctic
port of Murmansk has ordered
Greenpeace activists should be
detained for up to two months
while they're the subject
of a piracy investigation.
So, I watched the Six O'clock News,
and suddenly,
"Fucking hell, it's Frank's face!"
They're in this courtroom,
behind these cages
and they look worried.
One by one, a court in Murmansk
charged 30 activists with piracy.
They now face a maximum
sentence of 15 years in jail.
This is absolutely catastrophic!
Ancl there was just panic and fear.
just thinking, "What the hell
has happened to my life?
"How did I get here?"