Militants holding two Italian hostages in Nigeria’s oil region said Thursday they would not release their captives until May at the earliest as payback for the day-earlier rescue of a Lebanese hostage.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said state officials had engineered the Wednesday rescue with funding from Italian oil company Agip, which employed the men.
The militants behind a year of stepped-up attacks against Nigeria’s oil industry said guards overseeing the hostages had been paid more than $1 million to help the captives to freedom, but that only the Lebanese broke free.
The Bayelsa state government and the oil company “will pay a hefty price for this slight,” the militants said in a statement.
They said negotiations for the Italians’ liberation had been called off and that the Italians would not be liberated before May.
Exact details of how the Lebanese man escaped the vast region of creeks and mangrove swamps were not given, and company officials were not immediately available for comment.
Four workers were abducted Dec. 7 during an attack on an oil export terminal operated by the Italian oil company Agip. One of the Italians was released Jan. 17.
Nigerian militants have frequently taken foreign workers hostage since launching a wave of attacks on the country’s oil industry in early 2006 that have cut oil exports by 25 percent. The militants are demanding a greater share of oil revenues for their southern region, where all of the crude in Africa’s biggest producer are pumped. Despite the great riches stored under their lands, the region is among the poorest in Nigeria.