The lawyer for a group of Newfoundland sealers charged under the Canadian Fisheries Act said Tuesday the 12-year-old charges against her clients are politically motivated.

The trial for 11 sealers, charged in 1996 with selling blueback seals, began Tuesday in provincial court in Corner Brook.

Bluebacks, hood seals that keep their blueish coat from birth to a two years of age, are protected under federal fisheries laws from the sale, trade or barter of their pelts.

The sealers' lawyer, Averill Baker, told CBC News her clients are fighting the charges on principle.

Baker said fisheries officers used their spotter plane to find the blueback seal herd and then broadcast its location.

The prosecution will not call any of the fisheries officers involved in 1996 to the witness stand.

"Why? Because they were allowing it, because they knew that at that time, in everybody's mind, that was allowable to do."

Baker said government officials laid the charges against the men for fear of reaction from seal hunt protesters.

"This was politically driven and it still is. And that is very disappointing," Baker said.

A pelt processing company arranged to buy the blueback coats from the sealers. Baker said when the company heard about the DFO investigation of the sealers, it stopped payment.

Baker said if the sealers weren't paid for the coats, then they technically didn't sell them.

Bluebacks are a different species than white-coated harp seal pups, which are illegal to kill.