Ben Stewart - Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg

The crew take a seat or kick their heels. The mood is heavy. This feels bad. A uniformed woman appears in the doorway.

‘Allakhverdov? Andrey Allakhverdov? Roman Dolgov? Dima Litvinov?’

‘Yes.’

‘Follow me, please.’

Then a man appears behind the woman.

‘Faiza Oulahsen? Sini Saarela?’

Sini is led down a corridor to a small, grimy interview room. It’s cold. A woman is sitting at a desk in front of a computer monitor. Sini sits down. Opposite her is a policeman. He starts to speak. The woman translates.

‘We have to write a written report. About the incident.’

‘The incident?’

‘The incident. A serious crime has been committed and we suspect you may be responsible.’

In rooms along the corridor the activists are facing investigators and translators. Dima is sitting opposite a man in scratchy blue trousers and an open-necked civilian shirt who introduces himself as a colonel in the Investigative Committee. He has in front of him a sheet of paper, which he lifts with some solemnity before reading out an official proclamation. ‘You are now considered to be a suspect in a case of piracy.’

‘Piracy?’ Dima shakes his head. For a moment he wonders if he has misunderstood. ‘Did you say piracy?’

‘Yes, piracy.’

‘Are you kidding me? How can you… do I look like a pirate? Come on, man. This is insane.’

The colonel raises a dismissive hand. ‘Spare me. You don’t need to say anything right now, unless you are proposing to give me a statement?’

Dima screws up his face and pats the air dismissively. ‘No. No, I’m not giving you a statement. I’m giving you a fact. You can’t charge us with piracy. That’s just so dumb it hurts.’

‘And that is your statement?’

‘No! No, it’s not a statement, it’s… it’s just… seriously, man. Piracy? ’

‘Either you’re making a statement or you’re not. Make up your mind. In the meantime I need to tell you you’re remanded in custody until the court hearing.’ The colonel scribbles something on the sheet of paper, and still looking down he adds, ‘We’re going to ask the court to hold you in custody for the length of the investigation.’

‘Well, how long is that going to take?’

The man looks up, lays down his pen and presses the tips of his fingers together.

‘We can keep you for a year and a half.’

‘What?’

He shrugs his shoulders.

‘Okay,’ says Dima, ‘what’s the sentence for piracy?’

‘Ten to fifteen.’

‘ Years? ’

‘Years.’

Dima crumples in his seat. His heels slide on the floor. He grips the handles of the chair and holds on tight, steadying himself. In the very pit of his stomach he can feel a tight knot of fear, like a fist in his belly. And this is the moment Dima Litvinov crosses into a new plane of existence. He was just in the middle of a normal, good, hardcore Greenpeace action, and now suddenly he’s facing fifteen years in jail.

Meanwhile, in a room down the corridor Roman Dolgov is listening to an argument between two investigators.

‘This is crazy,’ says one. ‘There are thirty of them.’

‘What can we do?’ says the other. ‘It’s coming from the top. An order from the minister.’

They’re in the hands of the Kremlin now.

When they’ve all been read the declaration, they’re taken out to transport vans. An officer barks orders in Russian. Dima translates.

‘Okay, listen up, detainees! You are being taken to lock-up facilities while you await hearings to consider your continued detention during the course of the investigation. Please, take your places.’

The back doors of the transport vans are thrown open. The activists are loaded into the vehicles, engines turn over and growl into life. Half an hour later one of the vans pulls into a submarine base. Kieron, Frank and Cristian are hauled out and led through the complex to a cell. It measures two metres by a metre and a half. Kieron grimaces then slowly lowers himself to the floor. He’s tired, confused, unsure how he ended up here.

The three of them are sat on the floor in a row with their feet up on the wall opposite. In the corner of the cell a human shit is radiating a grotesque smell. It must have been there for weeks, maybe longer. It’s green and white. Covered in fungus.

Across town Dima and Pete Willcox are driven into the yard of a police station. They’re strip-searched and their fingerprints are taken, then they’re put in a cell with a Russian guy, a drunk who’s in for assault. The toilet is a hole in the floor behind a partition that you can crouch behind. The Russian is leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. Pete lies down and closes his eyes. It’s been a long, long week. Dima sits on the floor and rests his chin on his knees. In the background, fuzzy and barely tuned, a radio is playing a Russian pop song, but a few minutes later the news comes on, and the Sunrise is the lead story.

‘…when there was an attack on the platform by the group, who were pretending to be ecologists… have now arrived in Murmansk… tried to take over an oil platform… extremely violent… injured coastguard officers…’ Dima’s head jerks up. In his stomach the knot tightens. ‘…managed to apprehend them… clear case of piracy… the state has succeeded in defending the Russian Federation from this attack. The government is not yet sure if this was an operation directed by the secret services of a foreign country or whether it was a rival corporation paying the group to launch their assault. But obviously this was an attack on Russia’s legitimate interests.’ Then an official from the Kremlin is interviewed – the Kremlin! – who says, ‘Let me be clear, this is not something we are going to tolerate. There will be serious consequences for these individuals.’

Dima hugs his knees tight. The drunk draws on his cigarette. ‘Ten to fifteen,’ he says, blowing out smoke. His words are slurred, his nose is dark red, the colour of cherries. ‘That’s heavy.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Piracy. Ten to fifteen years, that’s heavy, man.’

‘You know we’re Greenpeace?’

‘Of course.’

‘You really think we’re going to do time?’

‘Well, once you’re in here, and if they say you did it…’

‘But do you really think we’ll go to jail ?’

‘If they say you did it, you usually did.’

Dima stares at him. Is this guy for real?

What does he know? He’s just a drunk.

It’s a week since the Sunrise was stormed, two days since they landed in Murmansk.

Across the city the activists are woken by policemen and taken out to prison transport vehicles. They’re called avtozaks – vans with tiny compartment cells so small that the prisoners’ knees are pressed against the wall in front of their noses. And this is how the thirty are taken to court to learn their fate.

The Russian men arrive first – Roman Dolgov, the photojournalist Denis Sinyakov and Andrey Allakhverdov, the ship’s fifty-year-old chief press officer. They’re locked in a holding cell. Their lawyer comes in. He tells them Putin has been talking about the case. The President said they’re ‘obviously not pirates’, [8] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/25/vladimir-putin-greenpeace-kenya-mall-attack but Putin also claimed the commandos couldn’t have known the Sunrise crew were genuine environmental activists, that the authorities had grounds to suspect the campaigners were using Greenpeace as a cover for more sinister motives.

The door opens, a guard appears.

‘Sinyakov?’

‘Yes.’