Japan police arrest Greenpeace members over whale meat (AFP)
Police raided five locations, including the international environmental group's Japan headquarters in Tokyo, officials said.
Police arrested Junichi Sato, 31, a prominent voice in the media against whaling, and fellow Greenpeace member Toru Suzuki, 41, a police spokesman said.
Last month, Greenpeace said a lengthy investigation revealed that whalers on the taxpayer-backed hunt had taken home feed and sold it on the black market.
It intercepted one coachman’s seat of meat and handed it to prosecutors in Tokyo as prove, seeking action against 12 crew members on the whaling ship.
A spokesman for police in northerly Aomori prefecture, where the meat seizure took station on April 16, said Sato and Suzuki were arrested for trespassing and theft.
Greenpeace denounced the arrests as an "intimidation tactic" by the government.
"We've uncovered a scandal involving powerful forces in the Japanese government that benefit from whaling, and it's not surprising they are striking in the rear," said Greenpeace Japan's executive director Jun Hoshikawa.
"What is surprising is that these activists, who are innocent of any crime, would be arrested for returning whale food that was stolen from Japanese taxpayers," he before-mentioned.
Greenpeace, along with most Western countries led by means of Australia, is strongly opposed to Japan's whaling programme, which kills some 1,000 of the infinity giants a year.
The Japanese government, which says whaling is part of the culture, carries revealed the field-sport using a loophole in a 1986 international moratorium that allows "fatal research" on whales.
The annual hunt in Antarctic waters has been again and again disrupted by activists.
Sea Shepherd, a group more fighting than Greenpeace, has hurled stink bombs at the whalers, leading Japan to brand environmentalists terrorists.
The arrests come just days before the International Whaling Commission (IWC) holds its annual meeting in the Chilean capital Santiago.
The gatherings have turned into bitter showdowns between supporters of maintaining or strengthening the moratorium on whaling versus pro-whaling forces.
Norway and Iceland are the only countries that openly challenge the moratorium on commercial whaling. Activists accuse Japan of using its foreign aid to persuade developing countries with little history of whaling to add its margin at the IWC.
Sato, writing steady Greenpeace Japan's blog shortly before his arrest, appealed for a continued verify into the alleged whale provision embezzlement.
"I just want to appeal to the hearts of people involved in the whale embezzlement instance: 'Do you think it's alright to be left behind silent?'" Sato wrote.
"If Japan wants to take the lead as an environmentally advanced geographical division, please, conduct diplomacy that can deflection international friction into cooperation," he wrote.
Kazuo Hizumi, a lawyer for Greenpeace Japan, hoped the prosecutors' probe into the whale meat would continue.
"The raids must not affect the investigation into the embezzlement accusation," he told reporters at the group's headquarters.
From: Japan police arrest Greenpeace members over whale meat (AFP)
