A train carrying the 30 detained crew members of a Greenpeace protest ship has arrived in St Petersburg from Russia's Arctic Circle city of Murmansk where the activists had been held since late September.
The regular Murmansk-Saint Petersburg passenger train drew into Ladozhsky train station in St Petersburg on Tuesday, where one of the carriages was decoupled and taken to a different location, an AFP staffer said.
Russia's Investigative Committee said Monday it was transferring the so-called "Arctic 30" to the western city, where the winter is usually less severe than in Murmansk in Russia's Far North.
The Russian prison service confirmed the transfer, without giving any details of their schedule or the detention centres where the activists from 19 different countries will be placed.
Greenpeace's Russian office wrote on Twitter that a train carriage with covered windows was detached and taken off in an unknown direction.
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"It's not clear where they are being taken," the group said.
The AFP staffer saw the carriage being taken to a distant part of the station, from where the prisoners are expected to be loaded into prison service trucks.
The crew members of Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise ship have been held in pre-trial detention after several of them staged a protest against energy prospecting in the Arctic by scaling a state-owned oil platform.
Russia's Investigative Committee in October said it was changing the initial piracy charges against the crew members to hooliganism, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison.
But Greenpeace says the piracy charges were never formally lifted, meaning the activists are currently facing charges of both piracy and hooliganism.
