No regrets say Greenpeace Arctic activists after UK return

Five British Greenpeace activists have arrived home in defiant mood after Russia granted them an amnesty to halt their prosecution for protesting against oil drilling in the Arctic.
Precisely 100 days after they were arrested on a Greenpeace ship, they flew from Saint Petersburg to Paris and then took a Eurostar train to London yesterday.
Anthony Perrett, Phil Ball, Iain Rogers, Alex Harris and filmmaker Kieron Bryan smiled as they posed for a scrum of photographers before emotional family reunions in the arrivals hall of St Pancras station.
Perrett said it was "good to be back" and he was "looking forward to spending some time in the woods" in his native Wales.

He said conditions in the prison in the Arctic Circle city of Murmansk, where the group of 30 activists were first held, were "a real challenge" and admitted he had experienced "quite a few dark moments".
Perrett said there had been deep snow and they were held in their cells for 23 hours a day, sharing a toilet between three people.

They were later moved to a more comfortable prison in Saint Petersburg before being released from custody after two months. They were allowed to leave Russia after the Kremlin-backed amnesty was issued.
Asked if the protest had achieved Greenpeace's aims, Perret said: "Of course it has been worth it. Our mission is to save the Arctic and stop oil exploration and we've never enjoyed quite so much media."

He said it was "completely preposterous" that the group had initially been charged with piracy, which carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years under Russian law.
The Greenpeace activists had been on board the Dutch-flagged ship Arctic Sunrise, targeting an offshore oil rig owned by the Russian energy giant Gazprom when they were seized in September by Russian security forces who winched down from a helicopter.
Seven of the so-called Arctic 30 charged in the probe have now left Russia after Dmitri Litvinov, a Swedish-American, left Saint Petersburg for Helsinki on Thursday.
Alexandre Paul of Canada flew out of Russia on yesterday with the five Britons.

'I won't stop Arctic protests now'
Alex Harris, the Greenpeace communications officer on the ship, said she thought the Russian government had granted the amnesty to avoid global criticism with just weeks to go until the start of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
"I think it was the easy way out for Russia, to get rid of us before the Olympics began and before there's a big PR pressure from Greenpeace and the rest of the world," she told journalists.