Kremlin: Greenpeace case indicates investigators independent from Putin

The indictment of Greenpeace activists has demonstrated that President Vladimir Putin exercised no authority over investigators, the Kremlin said Friday. "You did not believe when we said that he (Putin) does not and cannot interfere in the work of investigative agencies," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "Yet when the course of events shows that his words cannot work as instructions for the investigative agencies, you find it surprising," he said. This week, the Russian Investigative Committee charged 30 Greenpeace activists with piracy for trying to land at an oil platform in Russia's exclusive economic zone in mid-September. A court in the White Sea city of Murmansk remanded the activists from 18 countries for two months. After the Russian border guards detained the Arctic Sunrise ship in the northern Pechora Sea on Sept. 19, Putin told the 3rd International Arctic Forum that he did not consider the Greenpeace actions as piracy. Earlier, Putin's Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin has called for leniency for the activists.