A militant group in Nigeria’s oil region issued the first photographs of two British oil workers held hostage for four months and said the release of Robin Hughes and Matthew Maguire is tied to the group’s detained leader being freed by Nigerian authorities.
“We intend to hold on to them for as long as a very sick and dying Henry Okah is held hostage by the Nigerian state,” Jomo Gbomo, a spokesman for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, said in an e-mailed statement. “God forbid that Henry Okah should die in detention.”
Hughes and Maguire were among 27 oil workers, including five foreign nationals, seized by gunmen who hijacked their vessel on Sept. 9 in the Niger Delta. MEND said later that it had rescued the hostages from their attackers and freed all except the two Britons. MEND has accused the U.K. government of supporting Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’Adua.
Attacks on Nigeria’s oil industry by MEND and other armed groups have cut the country’s exports by more than 20 percent since 2006. The country is Africa’s leading oil exporter and the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports. MEND claims to be fighting for the poor in the oil-rich Delta it says are yet to benefit from the region’s wealth.
Okah, accused of being the group’s leader, was arrested in Angola in September 2007, suspected of gun running. He was deported without charge to Nigeria to face 62 counts of treason, gun-running and terrorism in a closed trial and faces the death penalty if convicted. Okah is in poor health with a kidney ailment, according to his lawyer Femi Falana.
Message From Hostages
Photographs e-mailed by MEND show the hostages standing in a jungle clearing, one of them dressed only in shorts. The e- mail also carries a message from the hostages to their family members, with Hughes quoted as blaming an “insincere Nigerian government, greedy oil companies” and U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown for their plight.
MEND said the hostages have been separated from each other. While condemning the rash of kidnappings in the Delta region by gunmen often seeking ransom, the rebels defended their own action of holding hostages, saying it will remain part of their strategy in 2009.
“Our policy on kidnapping high-value oil workers from Western Europe and North America remains unchanged,” said Gbomo.