Greenpeace is considering appealing the resolution of the National Court, of the Central Court number 5 to dismiss the complaint of the NGO for aggression. The environmental organization reiterates that, "as the unpublished images show so far, the action of the Navy was disproportionate." Therefore, it announces that it is studying appealing this decision. This complaint occurred after the attack suffered in November 2014 by the peaceful Greenpeace activists when they were demonstrating in front of the Rowan Renaissance ship to protest against oil exploration in the waters of the Canary Islands.
"These unpublished images filmed from the Rowan clearly demonstrate the intentionality and brutality of the aggression suffered by the activists," said Julio Barea. "Anyone who sees these images and the previous ones can see that it is a disproportionate reaction to a peaceful protest and that the activist's injuries were clearly caused by the Navy's attack."
According to the NGO in a statement, "the National Court justifies, among others, the decision to dismiss the case because the use of force used by the Navy was in compliance with its duty. It should be remembered that as a result of that excessive use of force, three activists were injured, one of them seriously, and who is still recovering today."
"The peaceful protest should not be repressed with the disproportionate use of force, since doing so would create a serious precedent, since the right to protest must always exist," said José Manuel Marraco, lawyer for Greenpeace Spain. "We still wonder what a Navy ship was doing escorting a ship from an oil multinational and that also had all the people of the Canary Islands against it," he added.
Greenpeace is considering appealing the resolution of the National Court, "since all the actions of the environmentalists were peaceful, previously communicated to the ship and only tried to denounce the environmental aggression that the extraction of oil in the Canary Islands would cause, and never to board the ship of the oil multinational," they point out.
