March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Two Japanese members of Greenpeace appeared in court on charges of stealing whale meat, in what the environmental group said was a legitimate act to highlight corruption in Japan’s controversial whaling program.

Junichi Sato, 32, and Toru Suzuki, 42, appeared in the district court in the city of Aomori at 3 p.m. for a pre-trial hearing, Greenpeace spokesman Greg McNevin said by phone. The two were arrested in June last year for allegedly stealing whale meat from a transport company in Aomori in northern Japan. The two, who were held for 26 days after being arrested, face as many as 10 years in jail if found guilty, Greenpeace said.

Greenpeace says Sato and Suzuki took the meat to show it was being sold illegally and to highlight there is corruption in Japan’s whaling industry, which has been criticized by countries including Australia and the U.S. The case may provide a precedent for legitimate activism in Japan.

“We see it as something which is about much more than the issue of whaling and embezzlement of taxpayers’ money,” Frode Pleym, a Greenpeace campaigner in Tokyo, said. “It is about the possibility for the Japanese public, that being individuals, organizations or the media, to operate in a truly democratic manner.”

Greenpeace last May showed reporters a box containing 23.5 kilograms (52 pounds) of whale meat it said was smuggled ashore by a crew member on Japan’s whaling fleet for sale on the black market.

The group handed the box to prosecutors along with documents that showed whale meat worth as much as 15 million yen ($156,000) had been stolen.

Convincing Prosecutors

Taking the box was justified to convince prosecutors to investigate the corruption, Greenpeace told reporters on May 15. Hajime Ishikawa, deputy head of Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research, which oversees the whaling program, said at the time the meat was a gift to crew members and presented “no legal problem.”

A police investigation into the allegations yielded no charges.

The pre-trial hearing today is the third since the pair’s arrest last year. The trial is expected to begin in June.

Japan conducts annual hunts using a rule under a moratorium on whaling agreed in 1986 that allows “lethal research” on whales. The hunts are necessary to prove whale populations have recovered enough to justify a return to commercial whaling, the government says.

The Japanese government spends as much as $60 million a year on its whaling program, including on expeditions to Antarctica, and relies on sales of whale meat to fund 85 percent of its costs.

Australia, the U.S., New Zealand and other countries, along with environmental groups, say the research program is a sham and is commercial whaling in disguise.

With reporting by Gemma Daley in Canberra. Editors: Aaron Sheldrick, Paul Tighe.

To contact the reporter on this story: Adam Le in Tokyo at ale14@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 23, 2009 02:41 EDT