Greenpeacers sentenced

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2010:
(published October 5, 2010)
TOKYO–Greenpeace Japan anti-whaling campaigners Junichi Sato,
33, and Toru Suzuki, 43, were on September 6, 2010 convicted of
stealing more than 20 kilograms of whale meat from a warehouse in
April 2008, and were sentenced to a year in jail each, suspended
for three years. Sato and Suzuki contended that they took the whale
meat as evidence that members of the crew of the whaling ship Nissan
Maru were illegally selling meat from whales who had been killed in
the name of scientific research. The case, the award-winning film
The Cove, and the July 2010 deportation of Sea Shepherd
Conserv-ation Society activist Pete Betheune, whose boat the Ady Gil
was sunk by a Japanese whaler in January 2010, have greatly raised
Japanese awareness of the nation’s involvement in whaling.