On Friday, October 19, Russian court in Murmansk denied bail to three more Greenpeace activists detained last month while mounting a protest against offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Sea.

      Alexandra Harris, from the United Kingdom, Canadian Alexandre Paul and Anne Mie Roer Jensen from Denmark are the latest in a string of people to have been denied bail ahead of their trial on piracy charges.

      All the three women rejected the charges of piracy leveled against them at the hearing. “We did not use weapons, we are peaceful. We want to save the Arctic, and we are here to spread the word," Jensen, 26, a student at Marstal Navigation School in southern Denmark, said at a preliminary court hearing. She added that all the Greenpeace activists were unarmed, in contrast to the officers who detained them.

      On Thursday, the court in Murmansk denied Australian radio operator Colin Russell bailand ordered him to remain in custody until November 24. He joined nationals of France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and four other countries previously denied bail.

      The group of 30 Greenpeace activists currently in detention, which includes two freelance journalists, could face up to 15 years in jail. Greenpeace has collected almost 1.5 million signatures for a petition to free the Arctic Sunrise group, the organization’s program coordinator Yevgeniya Belyakova said on Friday.