By Captain Paul Watson
Let’s talk about the power of a malicious government to wage petty wars of retribution against individuals working to expose crimes and corruption.
Between 2005 and 2017, I starred in a television show on Discovery Animal Planet called Whale Wars. It was the most popular show on the network, reaching millions of people around the world. It was extremely embarrassing to the Japanese government.
Our cameras exposed the illegal whaling operations of the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in violation of the International Whaling Commission’s Global Moratorium on Commercial Whaling.
The publicity generated by our confrontations with the Japanese whalers attracted worldwide attention, contributing to the International Court of Justice reaffirming in 2014 the illegality of Japanese whaling.
The Japanese government was angry at our interventions and issued an arrest warrant for me on the charges of conspiracy to trespass and obstruction of business.
I had not injured anyone nor damaged any property, yet Japan was able to have an Interpol red notice issued against me. At the request of Japan, Costa Rica also had an Interpol Red Notice issued against me for intervening against an illegal shark finning operation by a Costa Rican fisherman in Guatemalan waters in 2002, which I did in cooperation with the government of Guatemala. A charge filed a decade after a Costa Rican court had cleared me of all charges relating to that incident.
The only evidence Japan had against me was an accusation by Captain Pete Bethune, who made a deal with the Japanese prosecution. In exchange for a suspended sentence, Bethune accused me of ordering him to board a Japanese harpoon vessel.
Bethune had boarded the Shonan Maru #2 to confront the Japanese captain who had deliberately rammed and destroyed his $2,000,000 vessel, for which there were no legal consequences to Japan. The charges of trespassing and obstructing business against Bethune were dropped and the charges for conspiracy and obstructing were filed against me.
After his release, Bethune signed an affidavit stating that he had lied to the Japanese in return for the suspended sentence. The Japanese refused to accept the affidavit, although it was reviewed by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who allowed me to return to the United States.
In 2015, my attorney, Abraham Stern, in Costa Rica informed the Costa Rican Supreme Court that the charge against me should be dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired.
Costa Rican Supreme Court Judge Celso Gamboa Rica dismissed our request without reason or explanation. My attorney accused the judge of bias, and we claimed that the decision was unlawful.
Last month (June 2025) we discovered the reason for his bias and his unlawful ruling. Judge Gamboa Rica was arrested and extradited to the United States for drug trafficking.
This explains why he ruled against me. This judge, according to the indictment, was involved with smuggling drugs. The connection: Much of the narcotics trade is done by fishing vessels moving drugs through Costa Rican waters. The fishing community wanted my head, and Gamboa was trying to give it to them.
This extradition came as a shock to the Costa Rican public because Gamboa was a powerful figure within the Costa Rican judicial system.
Victor Boza, the chapter leader for the Captain Paul Watson Foundation in Costa Rica, said, “His arrest not only exposes troubling signs of corruption within the judicial system but also reinforces the narrative around the challenges Paul Watson faced in seeking justice.”
Fortunately, in 2017, a change in the Costa Rican government saw the new government dismiss the Red Notice. I received a phone call from the new Costa Rican Minister for the Environment apologizing for the actions of the previous government.
For fourteen years, I have been persecuted with the Interpol Red Notice. In April of this year, the Red Notice against me was suspended pending a review of political abuse by Interpol. On June 24. A decision was made, but I’ve yet to be informed if the removal will be permanent.
On June 15, Vitalie Pîrlog, former chair of INTERPOL’s Commission for the Control of Files, was arrested in Dubai on charges of forgery, bribery, and fraud. This was a seismic blow to INTERPOL’s credibility.
Pirlog would have had access to my files and would have been in a position to receive bribes from Japan to keep the Red Notice against me in force. There is no proof of this, but his cases are being reviewed.
Interpol has been under investigation for political abuse and corruption for some time. In 2017, my case was cited as an example by a European Parliamentary Committee of political abuse of the Interpol system.
Pîrlog allegedly abused his position to block Red Notices for fugitives, enabling criminals to evade justice through fake asylum claims in Moldova for millions in bribes. His arrest exposes vulnerabilities in INTERPOL’s oversight and raises questions about systemic corruption. It’s a wake-up call for stronger safeguards to protect the integrity of global law enforcement. If he accepted bribes to block Red Notices, he could have also accepted bribes to not remove notices or to post notices.
Japanese whaling is a criminal enterprise protected by the government of Japan with help from Interpol.
I am the only person in the history of the Interpol to be given a Red Notice for conspiracy to trespass and conspiracy to obstruct business.
I am also the only person that I know of to be on the Red Notice while at the same time working with Interpol.
In 2015, after we chased down the toothfish poacher Thunder, we delivered the confiscated net and evidence seized to Interpol authorities in Mauritius.
Last July, when I was arrested in Greenland by twelve heavily armed Danish police who boarded my ship in Nuuk, I was surprised at how serious they were. These officers had been flown in from Copenhagen as a special tactical force. Later, I discovered why when the court in Greenland revealed that the Japanese had described me as an extremely dangerous armed eco terrorist, even though I have never injured a single person in my entire life, nor have I ever been convicted of a felony crime.
The Greenland court would not even look at our evidence for the first two months, and after five months, they finally decided to extradite me to Japan. The next day, the justice minister of Denmark made the political decision to release me.
The Japanese were furious. In January of 2025, the Japanese foreign minister called in the Danish ambassador to Japan to his office in Tokyo to berate him and to accuse Denmark of betraying Japan. Betrayed I discovered in a personal conversation with President Emmanuel Macron that Japan had put considerable pressure on France to have me extradited and threatened economic sanctions if France refused to cooperate. France refused, and President Macron assured me that I would always be safe in France.
Conspiracies, corruption, threats, and global persecution. All this for saving whales!
