An armed separatist group in southern Nigeria that is holding four foreign oil workers hostage said on Sunday that it will not be swayed by their pleas for release and indicted Italian oil firm Agip for allegedly attempting to pay a ransom.
”We have kept these hostages for more than two weeks now. Do you imagine they have not pleaded with us on their own? Why should we be swayed because their appeal is now printed on the pages of an Italian paper?” a spokesperson a for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said in an e-mail statement.
”Agip has tried and have been duped by several fraudsters who claim to be able to effect the release of the hostages. That will not happen and Agip should redirect these monies to the development of communities they have jointly raped for so many years,” added the Mend statement.
There is yet no formal Agip reaction to these allegations.
The Mend spokesperson was responding to a question on whether pleas made by the hostages in an interview published on Sunday in an Italian communist newspaper could move Mend to release them.
The four hostages, said to be held in an unknown location in the region, have called on their respective home governments to help in securing their release.
On December 7, the group abducted four foreign oil workers — three Italians and one Lebanese — and released their photographs to the media. It later stepped up attacks on Italian Agip and Anglo-Dutch Shell facilities in Rivers and Bayelsa states.
”Kindly put pressure on the Italian government and our company [Agip] to effect our release as soon as possible,” one of them, Italian Franco Arena, said in the interview published in the Il Manifesto newspaper.
”Do all you can to get us out. We are tired,” the hostages said several times during the telephone interview.
Lebanese Imad Saliba also requested that his government and family be contacted. ”Please, do everything within your power to set us free as soon as possible,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
”On capture, they [the hostages] imagined this to be one huge joke. We would be paid off by Agip and they would emerge as heroes. That dream is still feasible but the two things which will definitely be absent are: the early release and any monetary exchange.
”The only exchange that will take place is an exchange of hostages,” Mend said.
The movement is demanding a larger share in oil revenues, compensation for communities affected by oil pollution and the release of some Niger Delta citizens in exchange for the hostages’ liberation. — Sapa-AFP