Japan arrests activists over stolen whale meat

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese police arrested two Greenpeace activists on suspicion of theft on Friday after they admitted taking a box of whale meat as evidence of what they said was embezzlement by Japanese whalers.

Greenpeace used the box of meat when complaining to prosecutors last month that some of Japan's whaling fleet crew shipped large quantities of the meat home on their return from a hunt, which anti-whaling campaigners said amounted to theft.

Japan says its whaling program is for scientific research purposes, but much of the meat ends up on restaurant tables.

"I can only say I think it is an illegal arrest," Yasushi Tadano, a lawyer for Greenpeace, told reporters in Tokyo. "As we said at the beginning, we could not have made a criminal complaint without the whale meat."

Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki are suspected of breaking into the premises of a trucking company in the northern prefecture of Aomori in April and taking the box of meat.

Greenpeace has admitted taking the meat, which it said was worth up to 350,000 yen ($3,242) during what it said was a four-month undercover investigation.

Commercial whaling was banned under a 1986 international moratorium, but Tokyo has campaigned for a lifting of the ban, saying whaling is part of the country's cultural tradition.

"The Japanese whaling program has been shamed internationally for its lack of scientific credibility, now it is being shamed at home as well for trying to hide the corruption, and now for taking revenge on those who have exposed it," Jun Hoshikawa of Greenpeace said in a statement.

The whalers are unlikely to be prosecuted over sending the meat home, Japanese media said. A poll in February showed that a majority of Japanese support whaling.

"South Koreans eat dogs, but we don't eat dogs," Shunichi Suzuki, a ruling Liberal Democratic Party proponent of whaling, told Reuters this week.

"But we don't tell South Koreans to stop eating dogs, and we shouldn't," he said. "Denying such tradition simply because you don't have it is cultural imperialism."

Japan's fleet caught only 551 minke whales compared with a planned 850 in its latest Antarctic hunt, after obstruction by anti-whalers.

The arrests come just ahead of the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Chile next week. Japan has often threatened to leave the organization over the moratorium.

(Additional reporting by Teruaki Ueno; Editing by Hugh Lawson)