The events leading to the warrant started a month earlier, in January 2010. On January 6, the harpoon vessel Shonan Maru 2 had allegedly rammed and cut in two the Ady Gil, a ship that belonged to Pete Bethune, an activist from New Zealand who had joined Watson and Sea Shepherd on a mission. On February 11, Bethune threw a harmless stink bomb made of rotten butter onto the Shonan Maru 2. A Japanese whaler, the very one who rammed the Ady Gil, claimed he was injured by the stink bomb, despite footage showing he was not even standing on the deck at the time. Watson, based in part on this video evidence, appealed his arrest in Greenland, but at his court appearances in August and September, the judge refused to view it. Instead, the court made its decision to extend Watson’s jail time until October, after which he might be extradited to Japan. 

The warrant also accuses Watson of “destruction of property,” specifically a net that was cut by Bethune when he boarded the Shonan Maru 2 to present them with a bill to pay for his destroyed ship. The net cost $800. The Ady Gil is worth $2 million. Yet, Japan was never held accountable for the damage to the ship or the six people onboard who were nearly killed. 

That only scratches the surface of the falsehoods and injustice. Japanese authorities arrested Bethune in 2010. While he was in prison, he made a secret deal with the Japanese prosecutor. He told them that Watson had ordered him to board the whaling vessel. In exchange for the testimony, his prison sentence was suspended. He didn’t realize that Japan planned to use his “confession” to go after Watson. 

The arrest warrant’s charge of “conspiration of trespassing” is based on Bethune’s testimony—but in 2013, Bethune wrote an affidavit admitting that the testimony was a lie, muttered under the threat of prison time. Still, Interpol, the international police organization, never acknowledged that affidavit. They continued to track down Watson for almost a dozen years. 

The senselessness of the arrest warrant is matched only by that of the issue Watson was fighting when he was implicated. Sea Shepherd was protesting the brutal slaughter of whales by the Japanese fleet. Japan announced in 2018 that it would leave the International Whaling Commission’s whaling moratorium, which had prohibited all commercial whaling on all species and populations since the mid-1980s. The Japanese government started bankrolling pricey marketing campaigns and subsidizing the nation’s whaling industry with taxpayer dollars. Yet, only a tiny sliver of Japanese people eat whale meat. The nation’s whaling programs have drawn the ire of international courts and the general public while bringing little benefit to its citizens—so why still do it?