MURMANSK, October 7 (RAPSI) – The defense lawyers of detained Greenpeace activists are dissatisfied with their client’s detention conditions, and ask the court to release them under house arrest.

The representative of the Greenpeace defense team, Sergei Golubok said at at press conference on Monday, that the attorneys were dissatisfied with the conditions in which the detained activists are being held. He said that a lot of the activist’s access to drinking water is limited, and some activists complain about video surveillance in their holding cells.

Golubok also reported that some of the detained have medical problems and experience difficulties in communication with the detention’s personnel because of the language barrier

The Arctic Sunrise ship was seized by Russian border guards on September 19 in international waters, within Russia's exclusive economic zone, a day after two Greenpeace activists scaled the Prirazlomnaya drilling rig in the Pechora Sea, the southeastern part of the Barents Sea. Greenpeace claimed that the ship was held under armed guard.
The platform, owned by Gazprom Neft Shelf, a subsidiary of Russian energy giant Gazprom, is the first ice-resistant stationary oil platform in the world set to produce offshore Arctic oil.

Greenpeace and other environmental groups oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic because they say that it is currently impossible to sufficiently clean up potential oil spills in the region, and that such drilling cannot be economically viable without state subsidies.