Militants holding foreign oil workers hostage in Nigeria released one in the presence of reporters on Wednesday, handing over a diabetic 69-year-old American after nearly two weeks in captivity.
Macon Hawkins, of Kosciusko, Texas, was handed over to the Nigerian military after militants surprised journalists by freeing him as the reporters visited militant strongholds in the oil-rich creeks of the southern Niger Delta.
Hawkins, whose birthday was Wednesday, seemed calm as he greeted the Nigerian troops and said he bore his captors no ill will.
“I have no animosity toward them at all,” said Hawkins. “I’ve seen their little villages, they’re dirt poor, poor as field mice,” he said.
Hawkins was seized by Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta militants on February 18 along with eight other oil workers in Africa’s largest producer of crude. There was no word Wednesday on the other’s fate although militants have said they were being treated well.
Hawkins, shown to another group of reporters while still in captivity on Friday, said he was diabetic but that he was receiving his medication in captivity.
The militants took the nine hostages amid a series of assaults on the oil industry in Africa’s largest producer of crude that cut production by about 20 percent. Four hostages taken in an earlier seizure had been released unharmed.
The militants are demanding Nigeria’s federal government release two of their region’s leaders from prison, while demanding a greater share of proceeds from the oil pumped from beneath their southern lands, which remain deeply impoverished.