Nigerian separatist guerrillas released six of their nine foreign hostages on today but warned that they would step up attacks aimed at shutting down the country’s oil industry.
The militants also stated they would not hand over the remaining captives two Americans and a Briton until two ethnic Ijaw leaders are freed from jail and the oil giant Shell makes a hefty payout to polluted villages.
Officials confirmed that Macon Hawkins, a 69-year-old Texan suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, had been freed.
Meanwhile, an AFP reporter saw five more freed oil workers arriving at Delta State Governor James Ibori’s lodge in the oil city of Warri and navy spokesman Captain Obiara Medani said that a total of six men had been freed.
A statement from the rebel Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) confirmed the release of Hawkins, who marked his 69th birthday today.
“He was released to a group of foreign journalists found to be touring the Niger Delta. No ransom for him or any other hostage has been demanded or received,” a statement from the group’s e-mail address said.
“He was released on account of his age and poor health with a stern warning not to return to the Niger Delta unless as a visitor,” it added.
The other hostages are Cody Oswald and Russel Spell from the United States, British security expert John Hudspith, Egypt’s Bardese Mohammed and Aly Shady, Tony Santos of the Philippines and Thailand’s Muado Somsak and Arak Suwana.
All were kidnapped on February 18 when armed militants stormed a pipe-laying barge operated by their employer, the US engineering firm Willbros, during a series of attacks around Shell’s Forcados oil terminal.
The MEND spokesman said the Egyptian, Thai and Filipino captives would be released, but insisted that the remaining two Americans and a Briton would not be freed until the group’s demands are met.
They have demanded the energy giant Shell pay 1.5 billion dollars (1.2 billion euros) in damages to polluted Ijaw communities and that the government release two prominent Niger Delta leaders from jail.
“We demand the intervention of a neutral arbiter in the resolution of this conflict and reiterate our objective of totally destroying the ability of the Nigerian government to export crude oil,” the statement said.
“This objective, the world has now understood is feasible. We will commence with attacks in another area of the Niger Delta with an aim to ensuring the total discontinuation of export of onshore crude oil,” it warned.
Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil exporter, producing 2.6 million barrels per day, but Shell has been forced to cut its output by 455,000 barrels per day since the start of the hostage crisis because of attacks on its plants.
The US oil giant Chevron said Wednesday that it had shut down one of its oil production plants in the Niger Delta.
Chevron spokesman Michael Barrett said the firm had shut the Makaraba flow station after an unexplained leak on a crude oil pipeline connecting the plant to the Escravos export platform caused a minor spill.
The shutdown will cost Nigeria 13,000 barrels per day in lost output.
The cause of the damage has not been explained, but a Shell source told AFP that overnight the militants had continued to dynamite evacuated oil plants a short distance further south, near the rebels’ suspected base.