GREENPEACE activist Phil Ball, who has been held in Russia for the past two months, has been granted bail, Greenpeace has said.
Father-of-three Mr Ball, from Chipping Norton, was one of 28 activists and two journalists seized from their ship, the Arctic Sunrise, by armed coastguards, after some of them tried to scale a Russian-owned offshore oil drilling platform in the Barents Sea.
Charged with piracy and placed in a pre-trial detention centre in Murmansk, the charges against them were later reduced to hooliganism, which carries a potential seven-year jail sentence.
During the last week, 20 of the so-called ‘Arctic 30’ have been granted bail from their current detention centre in Saint Petersburg, with a £38,000 surety for each prisoner paid by Greenpeace.
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