Militant group says South Korean oil hostages freed

Militants fighting in Nigeria’s southern oil-producing Niger Delta said on Thursday they have freed five South Korean oil workers taken hostage in an attack on a gas plant operated by Royal Dutch Shell. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which claimed Wednesday’s attack on Shell’s Cawthorne Channel facilities, said the hostages were released to a senator from the oil region on the direction of detained militia leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari. The group had earlier in the day pledged to free the hostages as requested by Dokubo-Asari. “In fulfilment of our earlier pledge, all five [South] Korean prisoners captured by our unit…were released at 1600 hours [local time],” said a subsequent email message by MEND. The prisoners were handed over to a Senator David Brigidi representing the Ijaw region of the delta, who is also an outspoken campaigner for local control of oil wealth which is a key demand of the militant group. There was no immediate confirmation of the release by Shell, which had contracted Daewoo Engineering and Korea Gas Corp - employers of the hostages – to work on the gas plant. A military spokesman Navy Captain Obiora Medani said he could not confirm the release as the military was not involved in the negotiations to free the captives. The attack on Wednesday was the latest in a series launched since the beginning of the year that has caused Nigerian oil exports to drop by more than 20 percent. MEND said Wednesday’s attack was in direct response to a federal appeals court ruling on Tuesday in the capital, Abuja, which denied bail to the region’s best known militia leader, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, who is facing trial on charges of treason. The presiding judge had refused bail demands, describing Dokubo-Asari as a security risk. The group has repeatedly demanded the release of Dokubo-Asari since it announced its emergence in January following an attack on an offshore facility where it seized four foreign workers. Dokubo-Asari, as leader of another militia group, the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, has campaigned for control of the delta’s oil wealth by its impoverished inhabitants, a call also taken up by MEND. More than a decade of restiveness in the oil region has seen the emergence of different armed groups in the region, many of whom attack oil facilities and abduct oil workers for ransom. On Sunday, eight oil workers seized from an offshore oil-rig two days earlier were freed by their captors. They had been abducted to pressure their employer to give jobs and other development benefits to the local community. DM/ SS