A Danish fisherman convicted in 2012 of illegal fishing has had his conviction overturned on the grounds that evidence supplied by Greenpeace was unreliable.
In 2012 Gilleleje fisherman Per Klug was sentenced to pay DKK430,000 in fines and to pay court costs at a municipal court. Now the high court has reversed the sentence.
According to his lawyer, the prosecution’s case was based solely on material supplied by Greenpeace, which he described as tantamount to outsourcing monitoring to the private sector. Now he is considering whether or not to take legal action against Greenpeace for the financial loss incurred, as well as the damage to his reputation.
Judge Katya Høegh ruled that it would have been technically possible for Greenpeace to manipulate the evidence in the half year between gathering their GPS data and passing it on to the police, and on these grounds she ruled this evidence inadmissible.
Greenpeace activists have previously been fined for trespassing on fishing vessels in Gilleleje harbour and attempting to plant GPS equipment in attempts to prove illegal fishing activity in a zone of the Kattegat where fishing is prohibited.
