Japan issues arrest warrants for three anti-whaling campaigners - including a Brit - for 'damaging' its whaling fleet

Japanese police hope to place 28-year-old Daniel Bebawi, from Nottingham, and two Americans on an international wanted list.

Japan has accused the activists from conservation group Sea Shepherd of damaging the propeller of one of its whaling boats, the Kaiko Maru, in the Antarctic in February 2007.

Clash at sea: This photo shows a ship belonging to the conservation group Sea Shepherd colliding with the Japanese ship Kaiko Maru in the water of Antarctic

Yesterday Sea Shepherd's UK spokesman Darren Collis said he believed the warrants were issued in retaliation for the anti-whaling group's success in disrupting Japan's whale hunt in the Southern Ocean last year.

'In my personal opinion, it's pure retaliation for preventing them from killing over a thousand whales and costing them a huge amount of money. It's a very petty action,'
Mr Collis, who was on the Sea Shepherd vessel at the time of the incident, said.

But the Japanese government has labelled the conservation group 'terrorists' for the direct action campaigners have taken against the whaling fleet in recent years.

Nobutaka Machimura, the government's chief spokesman, said: 'Regardless of a difference of opinion, it is unacceptable that those who are involved (in whaling) get injured... or face life-threatening dangers.'

Sea Shepherd says its strategies and tactics are designed to avoid physical injury to the whalers.

Controversial: The catcher ship Yushin Maru of the Japanese whaling fleet injuring a whale with a harpoon attempt before eventually killing it in the Southern Ocean

The warrants relate to clashes in February 2007, when the anti-whaling group's boat and the whaling vessel collided twice in the Antarctic near a pod of whales.

Earlier this year, there were further clashes between whalers and the conservation group, in which another Briton was held on a whaling ship.

Japan sets out to kill around 1,000 whales each winter as part of its annual 'scientific programme'.

Although the slaughter is allowed under International Whaling Commission (IWC) rules, Japan's actions have drawn international condemnation - including from the British Government.

In June Sea Shepherd announced plans to disrupt the 2008/2009 hunt, pledging to 'sink the Japanese fleet economically'.