Greenpeace activists released after G8 summitThe four activists were arrested on Friday after sailing an inflatable boat to the beach resort where world leaders were beginning a three-day summit meeting.
``The four have been released,'' an official at the Naha District Public Prosecutors Office on the southern island of Okinawa said, without giving further details.
The four members -- a woman from Israel and three men from the United States, Japan and Russia -- had been attempting to deliver logs from Russian forests and a letter to G8 leaders to highlight Greenpeace's campaign against what it calls ``illegal and destructive logging'' in ancient forests.
Greenpeace says G8 policies effectively subsidise and encourage such logging.
The G8 comprises the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Britain, Canada and Russia.
On Sunday, the Japanese coastguard released their flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, which had been impounded since Friday.
The coastguard said they impounded the boat because Greenpeace had defied a one-nautical-mile ban on boats approaching the venue and had threatened to do so again.
Greenpeace activists have been arrested on two other occasions in Japan this year, most recently in May. Each time they were detained for 11 days.