The kidnappers told Reuters via telephone late on Thursday their U.S. hostage Patrick Landry was gravely ill and threatened to kill three other foreign oil workers if he died.
They allowed the hostages — who also include a Briton, a Honduran and a Bulgarian — to make contact with colleagues and friends late on Thursday night in the presence of Nigerian security staff as a humanitarian gesture.
This was the first contact with the Nigerian government since the hostages were abducted from an offshore oilfield operated by Shell on January 11, the militants said.
The hostages complained via telephone on Thursday of diarrhea and fatigue from constant movement in the humid, mosquito-plagued delta in Nigeria’s far south.
“We are in bad shape, we really are,” said Landry, who suffers high blood pressure. “Meet these people’s demand. We are not military: we came here to work.”
“When this is done we will still not halt our attacks but concentrate less on Shell and spread our attacks evenly between the companies operating in Nigeria,” read an email from the group to Reuters.
“Be assured that we will continue our attacks very shortly. We are more than capable of sustaining the conflict,” the email said.
So far, Shell is the only oil major to say it has suffered attacks. It has cut its production by 210,000 barrels a day and pulled out 500 staff. Hundreds of contractors have also fled.
France’s Total and Italy’s Agip, a unit of ENI, have both denied militant claims they were attacked.
Army spokesman Mohammed Yusuf said troops in the area were on a state of high alert but were not seeking to track down the hostages. “The government is not going to use force. We are trying to negotiate with them,” Yusuf said.
The kidnappers have said two jailed Ijaw leaders, militant Mujahid Dokubo-Asari and former Bayelsa state governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, were the only qualified mediators for talks with the government.
Nigeria’s only Ijaw governor, Alamieyeseigha was impeached last month for money-laundering after escaping arrest in Britain and now faces criminal charges. Asari, who led a bloody militant rebellion in the delta in 2004, is on trial for treason.
Some analysts believe the violence could be intended to put pressure on the ruling party to choose a candidate from the delta for presidential elections next year.