A Nigerian armed separatist movement that has held three Italians and one Lebanese oil worker hostage for a month threatened Sunday to resume attacks on oil facilities in January and seize more captives.
“We are resuming with our attacks this month and may even take more hostages,” a spokesman for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in an e-mail message to AFP.
Responding to a question on the fate of the four hostages that the group kidnapped since last December 7 from southern Bayelsa State, the MEND spokesman declined to discuss them and insisted that its political demands must be met.
“We are not interested in talking about these people (hostages). If it takes us one year to get what we want, we will keep them and others,” the statement said.
Three Italians — Roberto Dieghi, Cosma Russo and Francesco Arena — and Lebanese Imad Saliba were captured when MEND attacked an oil installation owned by an Italian oil firm Agip in Brass, in Nigeria’s southern Bayelsa State.
MEND is demanding that Nigerian authorities release former Bayelsa State governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, jailed on corruption charges, as well as separatist leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari and other detainees from the region.
The group also wants 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.