Home for new year? Colin Russell about to ask Russia for exit visa

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/27/home-for-new-year-colin-russell

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Australian activist Colin Russell could be home in time for new year if Russian authorities grant the Greenpeace campaigner an exit visa on Friday.

Russell, 59, is one of 30 activists arrested and detained in September for protesting against a Russian oil rig operated by the Moscow-based energy company Gazprom in the Pechora Sea.

Known as the Arctic 30, the group, made up of 28 Greenpeace activists and two freelance journalists, was accused of hooliganism.

But the charges were dropped last week after the Russian parliament passed an amnesty law and freed the defendants.

Russell, from Woodbridge in Tasmania, will visit the Russian immigration service on Friday with his wife Christine and daughter Madeleine, and hopes to get his passport stamped so he can leave.

If all goes well, he could be flying out over the weekend and be in Hobart before New Year's Eve.

"It's wonderful news that Colin will most likely see in the new year at his house in Woodbridge," Greenpeace communications manager James Lorenz said.

"He has been incredibly strong throughout, never losing his sense of humour, but this final step is undoubtedly a huge relief."

Lorenz said Russell was "desperate" to get home since his arrest three months ago.

Meanwhile, two other Australian residents, Alex Harris from Sydney and Jon Beauchamp from Adelaide, are also waiting for their exit visas and could be back in Australia by the middle of next month.

Lorenz said Harris was expected to travel first to the UK to see her family in Devon, while Beauchamp would go to New Zealand before returning to Australia.

The first Arctic 30 Greenpeace activist, Dima Litvinov, left Russia by train on Boxing Day.

During the protest, the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise was boarded by soldiers on 19 September after campaigners tried to attached a banner to the Gazprom platform.

Russell had received Australian consular assistance.

Officials from the Australian embassy in Moscow visited him at the St Petersburg detention facility on 21 November.

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