Greenpeace chief is arrested on Arctic rig

The global head of Greenpeace has been arrested after breaching an injunction by scaling an Arctic oil rig operated by a Scottish company.

International executive director Kumi Naidoo volunteered to go to the drilling vessel in a bid to stop it operating, after Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy obtained an injunction from a Dutch court against Greenpeace breaching an exclusion zone around the rig.

The activists have been targeting the deep water drilling project off the coast of Greenland because of the damage they say a spill could do to the environment and the impact on the climate of exploiting new fossil fuel resources.

Cairn Energy obtained the injunction after a number of campaigners were arrested for protesting on the rig, as they demanded the company publish its plans for how it would deal with a spill.

Greenpeace said Mr Naidoo travelled to the Leiv Eiriksson vessel on an inflatable speedboat launched from the group's ship Esperanza, evading a Danish navy warship, and then climbed a 30-metre ladder up the outside of one of the platform's legs.

Greenpeace claims Cairn Energy has refused repeated requests to publish its oil spill plan.

Speaking before he set out to scale the platform, Mr Naidoo, said: "The Arctic oil rush is such a serious threat to the climate and to this beautiful fragile environment that I felt Greenpeace had no choice to return, so I volunteered to do it myself."