Greenpeace left red-faced after calendar mishap

PARIS, France – A 2015 Greenpeace calendar accidentally includes a wildlife photo taken by a French ex-secret agent who helped bomb its flagship Rainbow Warrior vessel in 1985, the environmental group said on Thursday, September 4.

The embarrassing glitch was made by a publishing firm hired by Greenpeace to produce the calendar for its US members, the group said.

The calendar features a photo taken by Alain Mafart, part of the team that sabotaged the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbor, New Zealand, to stop it leading anti-nuclear protests at Mururoa, France’s South Pacific test atoll.

“Workman Publishing sourced an image from a nature photographer, Alain Mafart-Renodier. It was later discovered that Mafart-Renodier is also Alain Mafart,” Greenpeace USA said in a statement.

The group said Workman had refused to recall the calendar unless it was reimbursed $250,000, but said that in any case, the publisher may not be able to retrieve all of the calendars printed so far.

“We determined that this was not the best use of our donors’ money. As a result, we have returned all royalty payments for the 2015 calendar we received from Workman,” the group said.

“Greenpeace will not be making any money from this calendar. We have also decided to end our business relationship with Workman and the company will not be producing future Greenpeace calendars.”

Axel Renaudin, the head of communications at Greenpeace France, said Workman had had a long-standing contract to provide the calendar and bought the wildlife picture in question — of giraffes and zebras — from an image bank.

He said that he believed the image was included by accident, and without Mafart’s knowledge.

“Personally, I don’t think he was even aware,” Renaudin told Agence France-Presse by phone.

The mistake was spotted by Greenpeace activists who were stunned at the mistake, he added.

Sinking of Rainbow Warrior

Mafart, a diver, was part of a team that attached two limpet mines to the underside of the Rainbow Warrior ship on July 10, 1985.

After the first explosion, the vessel began to take on water and Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, 36, went below deck to collect his gear. He was killed when the second device exploded.

New Zealand police rounded up two of the saboteurs – Mafart and Dominique Prieur – who had posed as a Swiss couple.

They pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were each given a 10-year sentence, although under a deal with France, they were transferred to serve out a 3-year sentence at a military base on the French atoll of Hao.

Both were flown home by May 1988 after serving less than two years.

In a book he published in 1999, Mafart wrote about his training as a combat diver and his work for the DGSE, France’s foreign espionage agency.

He said the operation had been designed only to disable the ship, and that the agency had been shocked at the loss of life.

The episode – dubbed “Operation Satanique” – was a public-relations disaster for the DGSE and the French president at the time, Francois Mitterrand.

It tainted relations between France and New Zealand for years, despite an agreement  whereby Paris paid compensation to its ally and apologized.

Stocks of the flawed calendars in Greenpeace’s possession will be recycled, and the group will distribute an “alternative version” featuring photography by Pereira as a tribute to him, the group said. – Rappler.com