Greenpeace Arctic 30 activist Frank Hewetson recalls ‘hope and despair’ of Russian jail

Postscript: Mr Hewetson believes Putin had an ulterior motive for authorising the release of the Arctic Sunrise protestors

Frank Hewetson, a Greenpeace International activist who was onboad the Arctic Sunrise (Denis Sinyakov / Greenpeace)

In September 2013 the crew of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise attempted to scale Gazprom's Prirazlomnaya drilling platform, in the Pechora Sea, south of Novaya Zemlya, Russia, to protest against the threat of oil drilling and climate change. Briton Frank Hewetson was among their number. Members of the group, dubbed the Arctic 30, were subsequently thrown into jail and investigated for piracy, which in Russia carries a maximum sentence of 15 years.

On Christmas Day Mr Hewetson was released under an amnesty law passed by the Russian parliament.

The activist believes Russian president Vladimir Putin had an ulterior motive for authorising the release of the Arctic Sunrise protestors: the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympics.

“The Winter Olympics were his baby and nothing on this Earth was going to taint that,” Mr Hewetson told The Independent. “He knew if we were still incarcerated it would be impossible for the media not to cover it.

“One of the first things I did when I got home was walk my kids to school. It was an emotional event for me and I felt much better for it.”

The uncertainty in jail had been hard to bear. “That oscillation of hope and despair was very difficult to deal with,” said Mr, Hewetson, 50, adding that it had been “a true test” of his character. “You had to dig very deep and I did nearly lose it,” he said.

Frank Hewetson is led into the Leninsky District Court Of Murmansk, Russia, 26 September 2013 (EPA)

A book about the campaigners’ ordeal, Don’t Trust, Don’t Fear, Don’t Beg, has since been optioned by David Puttnam, the filmmaker behind Chariots of Fire and The Killing Fields.

Keeping a diary helped him through “one of the lowest points” of his life, said Mr Hewetson, who is “proud” he managed to retain a sense of humour in impossible circumstances.

A year after his incarceration began, the environmentalist started re-reading his diary, looking over each entry day by day, even sharing some of them with his partner and children, aged 15 and 18.

Some of the excerpts are amusing (“I beat Vladimir at chess again last night – it’s getting embarrassing”) but many contain “far darker thoughts” that are difficult to repeat, Mr Hewtson said.

Upon his return home to north-west London the activist was given six months off work to help him recover. “I knew I’d recuperated when I found myself playing my son’s Call of Duty at 11am – I thought, ‘Time to go back to work’.”

Mr Hewetson resumed his role as action co-ordinator at Greenpeace and continues to work on the Arctic campaign. “I’m banned from Russia but I still really enjoy my job, and I’m still fully prepared to take risks,” he said.