Amnesty International on Saturday called on Nigeria to allow two detained suspected separatist leaders to be allowed access to their lawyers and family.
Henry Okah, suspected of being the spokesman for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and a colleague, had been held incommunicado since their extradition from Angola on February 14, said Amnesty.
“These two men are at risk of being tortured or ill-treated and should be seen by a lawyer and their families immediately,” said Erwin van der Borght, Director of Amnesty Internationals Africa Programme.
“They should either be charged or released from detention,” he added.
Amnesty had written to the government calling on them to allow access to the pair in accordance with a February 22 order from the Abuja high court.
On Friday, MEND accused the government of blocking access to the suspects. “MEND wishes to inform the world that the Nigerian government has blatantly refused to comply with an Abuja High court…granting the lawyers and families of Henry Okah and Edward Atatah immediate access to them,” the group said in a e-mail to AFP.
It said “the evasive attitude and contempt of court by the illegal regime of Umaru YarAdua has confirmed our fears for the duo in the governments so-called safe custody”.
The Nigeria authorities have said Okah is being investigated for gun-running, oil smuggling, financing militant activities, sabotage, kidnapping, hostage taking and piracy and the killing of foreign oil workers and security personnel.
MEND, the most prominent of Nigeria’s armed groups has always been at pains to say that unlike the criminal gangs operating in the Delta, it is fighting for a cause: a more equitable share of oil revenue for the local population.
Since 2006 attacks on oil companies in the delta has been so prevalent that Nigeria, the world’s eighth exporter of crude, has lost one quarter of its 2.6 million barrels per day output.