Global police organisation Interpol said it has removed its most-wanted designation for the anti-whaling activist and founder of the Sea Shepherd conservation group, Paul Watson, who is wanted in Japan over an encounter with a whaling ship in 2010.

Interpol had issued a “red notice”, at Japan’s request, for the arrest of the Canadian-American Watson, 74, who is known for his daring tactics, including disrupting and confronting whaling ships on the high seas.

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Interpol has now decided that the notice was “disproportionate”, Watson’s Paris-based lawyer William Julie said on Tuesday.

An Interpol red notice is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending legal action, based on a warrant from the judicial authorities in the requesting country, in this case, Japan.

In a post on social media by the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, the activist was quoted saying: “Finally I am free.”

“The Japanese whalers have been after me for 14 years ever since I was first detained in Frankfurt, Germany in May 2012,” Watson said.

“It has been an incredible pursuit by a very powerful nation using unlimited resources but finally I am free.”

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A spokesperson for Interpol confirmed to the AFP news agency that the organisation’s Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (CCF) had deleted the arrest notice for Watson.

“The CCF decision was made in light of new facts, including the refusal by the Kingdom of Denmark to extradite Mr Watson. This is in line with normal procedures,” the spokesperson said.

Watson was arrested and detained in Greenland in July 2024, on a more than decade-old Japanese arrest warrant, which accused him of causing damage to a whaling ship and injuring a whaler. He was released in December after Denmark refused the Japanese extradition request over the 2010 incident.

Watson left Denmark on December 20, and returned to France, where his children attend school.

In a statement, Watson’s lawyer said that the CCF considered that Interpol’s red notice “did not meet Interpol’s standards, citing the disproportionate nature of the charges… the considerable passage of time since the alleged facts, Denmark’s refusal to extradite him, and the fact that several other countries declined to act on Japan’s arrest or extradition requests”.

Lamya Essemlali, the president of Sea Shepherd France, hailed the “good news that this notice was finally cancelled”, but noted that Watson could still be arrested and sent to Japan for prosecution.

“It does not give Paul Watson his freedom of movement because the Japanese arrest warrant is sufficient for a country to order his arrest,” she said.