ST. PETERSBURG, November 13 (RAPSI) - The defense lawyers of Greenpeace activists are preparing an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), attorney Andrei Suchkov told journalists in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.

According to the lawyer, several articles of the European Convention of Human Rights (Convention) have been violated. Primarily, the activists' detention is illegal because they have been arrested in the exclusive economic zone.

The preparation of the appeal is now at the final stage, and the lawyers are ready to file the complaint with the ECHR but they nevertheless hope that Greenpeace activists will be released beforehand, Suchkov added.

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.

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.

On November 12, all 30 Greenpeace activists were transferred from Murmansk to St. Petersburg.