Ten environmentalists have been cleared of criminal charges after they forced a Tsakos Group tanker carrying Russian diesel to abort an attempt to unload at an English storage terminal.
Greenpeace activists occupied Navigator Terminals on the River Thames on 15 May, claiming that the 37,100-dwt Andromeda (built 2007) was due to unload 33,000 tonnes of Russian diesel.
Activists used two vessels to reach and occupy the facility. One of the activists, Benji Bailes, 38, abseiled over the side of the jetty at Grays, Essex, and held a banner saying: “Oil fuels war”. The ship turned around in the Thames without unloading, according to Greenpeace.
The activists, aged 27 to 72, had claimed they were preventing a crime, but prosecutors charged them with aggravated trespass.
District judge Christopher Williams acquitted them on Friday, saying that “in my view the unloading of the oil was the potential offence”, according to news agency PA Media.
Speaking after the verdict, Bailes said: “My job was to put my body between the oil tanker and its docking berth, keeping the cargo stuck at sea for as long as possible.”
Russia supplied one-fifth of the total UK supply of diesel in 2021 and the importing of Russian diesel on non-Russian ships has not yet been banned.
However, there has been a sharp decline in imports since March.
The Office for National Statistics has reported that no fuel was imported from Russia in June for the first time since records began 25 years ago.
The UK last week brought forward an import ban on Russian crude and oil products to fall into line with the European Union.
Seaborne crude imports will be banned from 5 December and oil products on 5 February across Europe. The crude ban in the UK had been due to be enforced from the end of December before the change.
