Updated 9.40pm
A GROUP OF animal rights activists say they ‘liberated’ nine lobsters by walking into a Dublin restaurant and pinching them from a fish tank.
The caged crustaceans were being kept in the tank in the window of Ka Shing Chinese restaurant on Wicklow Street before the gutsy rescue mission.
The escape happened just before 8pm on Friday evening with a video posted by the National Animal Rights Association (Nara) suggesting about 11 activists were involved.
Three or four activists clawed the cover from the fish tank and placed the lobsters in plastic bags while the others distracted restaurant staff.
They then hightailed it from the Dublin city restaurant as one of them unfurled a flag on of front of surprised diners.
Nara say they “joined forces” with Direct Action For Animals and the Alliance For Animal Rights for the the smash-and-crab operation.
Spokesperson Laura Broxson says that they “fully stand by their actions” with the activists then releasing the lobsters into the sea at Clontarf.
“We liberated them openly, because we are 100% behind our belief that it was the morally correct thing to do. What we did was an act of compassion, and we have no regrets,” she said.
The group say they are opposed to the practice of boiling lobsters alive. “Would you boil a cat or dog alive?”, Broxson asks in a statement published on their Facebook page.
Nara says they approached the restaurant about the issue prior to to the raid and “handed in leaflets, but to no avail”.
The group says members at an anti-fur protest were approached by gardaí ask about the incident the following day.
Gardaí have confirmed that they are investigating a theft from the restaurant on Friday evening.
Broxson told RTÉ that they know there might be legal consequences for what they did, but it is a “small price to pay”.
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