Three Italian employees of the Agip oil company held hostage in Nigeria since December 7 along with a Lebanese worker are well and have spoken to their families, the Italian foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
“They were able to speak to their families, to whom they confirmed they were in good health,” the ministry said in a statement.
The separatist Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) raised fears when it said in an email published on Monday by an Italian daily that one of the hostages, 64-year-old Roberto Dieghi, was ill.
Later in the day they said in an email to AFP that he “seems to be getting better”.
Dieghi was kidnapped along with fellow Italians Francesco Arena and Cosma Russo and Lebanese Imad Saliba when Mend attacked an oil installation owned by Agip at Brass in Nigeria’s Bayelsa State.
The movement has said it will not accept a ransom to free the four, but instead demands that Nigerian authorities free former Bayelsa State governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, jailed on corruption charges, as well as separatist leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari and other detainees from the Niger Delta.
The Mend is demanding a larger share for southern Nigerians in oil revenues, which account for almost all the country’s foreign exchange income, and compensation for communities affected by oil pollution.