Four foreign oil workers held hostage by armed separatists in Nigeria’s Niger delta region will be allowed no further contact with the outside world, the group holding them said on Saturday.
“All four hostages have been relocated and will not be permitted to communicate with the outside world until their eventual release,” the Movement for the Emanicipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said in an e-mail statement.
Three Italians — Roberto Dieghi, Cosma Russo and Francesco Arena — and Lebanese Imad Saliba were captured when Mend earlier this month attacked an oil installation owned by Agip of Italy in Brass, in Nigeria’s southern Bayelsa State.
Mend said its decision to relocate the men to an unspecified location came after the group discovered the four were in possession of a cellphone “smuggled” to them by a Bayelsa state official “working with an individual who recently escaped” from prison in Port Harcourt, the capital of neighbouring Rivers state.
Officials in Rome said the Italian hostages spoke to their families twice last week by phone.
Mend reiterated that it will not release the four men against payment of a ransom.
“As earlier stated, the hostages will only be exchanged. There will be no negotiations. There have been no meetings whatsoever with the Bayelsa government, Agip or any other parties towards the release of the hostages,” the statement said.
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 Niger Delta.
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.
“It is unkind for the Bayelsa State government to mislead the families of the hostages into believing it is working towards the release of the hostages.
The Bayelsa State secretary to the state government was appointed to negotiate the release and he is presently on holidays abroad, a clear indication that they have given up on trying,” the Mend statement continued.
The chief executive of Agip’s parent company Eni, Paolo Scaroni, met with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in Lagos on Wednesday, when the two ruled out armed action to free the hostages. – AFP