A Russian court on Sunday ordered the detention for two months of eight more crew members of a Greenpeace ship who protested against Arctic oil drilling as part of a probe into alleged piracy.

The Lenin district court in the northern city of Murmansk on Thursday had already ordered the detention of 22 other Greenpeace activists for two months, pending the investigation into suspected piracy after a protest at a Gazprom oil rig on September 18.

With the court's decision on Sunday, all 30 members of the Arctic Sunrise icebreaker crew will remain in custody until November 24.

Among their total are six British citizens, four Russians and nationals from 16 other countries including Argentina , Italy , France and Australia .

Reacting to the news of the detentions, Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International, said in a statement that the court's decision was a "blatant attempt to intimidate anyone preventing an oil rush in the Arctic ."

Diplomats from several countries attended the hearings.

Russian investigators have accused the activists of piracy after two tried to scale state energy giant Gazprom's Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the Barents Sea .

The group has denied committing piracy and accuses Russia of illegally boarding its ship in international waters.

President Vladimir Putin has said that the activists "are of course not pirates" but stressed they had broken international law by getting dangerously close to the oil rig.

Charges of piracy carry a maximum prison term of 15 years but the Investigative Committee said the charge against the group could be reduced in the course of the probe.
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