MOSCOW, October 25 (RAPSI) - The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg on November 6 will begin hearings in a case involving the Greenpeace activists detained in Murmansk over the Gazprom drilling platform raid in the Pechora Sea, ITLOS President Shunji Yanai said on Monday in a radio interview with Hamburg-based public radio and TV broadcaster NDR.

Russia will not take part in the hearing.

The Arctic Sunrise ship was seized by Russian border guards on September 19 in international waters, within Russia's exclusive economic zone, a day after two Greenpeace activists scaled the Prirazlomnaya drilling rig in the Pechora Sea, the southeastern part of the Barents Sea.

30 people, including six Britons and one American, were on board the vessel. All of them have been detained. On October 9, investigators found drugs aboard the ship.

On October 21, the Netherlands filed a request with ITLOS seeking the imposition of interim measures which must be taken before the trial on the merits to protect the interests of the parties to the dispute.

On October 24, Russian investigators replaced piracy charges with hooliganism charges.

The platform, owned by Gazprom Neft Shelf, a subsidiary of Russian energy giant Gazprom, is the first ice-resistant stationary oil platform in the world set to produce offshore Arctic oil.

Greenpeace and other environmental groups oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic because they say that it is currently impossible to sufficiently clean up potential oil spills in the region, and that such drilling cannot be economically viable.