An American worker held hostage in Nigeria is sick and his kidnappers will kill three fellow hostages if he dies, a militant leader threatened Saturday. Brutus Ebipadei of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta did not offer details on the condition of Patrick Landry, a ship captain from Houston, or say why his group would kill hostages from Britain, Bulgaria and Honduras if he died.| It would seem to defeat the purpose of taking hostages, but perhaps there's something about hostage-taking I don't know ... |
| I'm not sure he could tell you. |
Ebipadei said the kidnappers refused to negotiate and he reissued a threat to launch new attacks on installations in the oil-rich Niger Delta. "Our demands are not negotiable. And failure to meet those demands means we will launch attacks on all oil installations to stop Nigeria's capacity to export oil," Ebipadei said.
The militants demand the release of a former regional governor and a militant leader who pushed for greater local control of revenues from the delta. They also want $1.5 billion in compensation from Royal Dutch Shell, Nigeria's largest oil producer, for alleged environmental damage.
Nigeria, Africa's leading oil producer, exports about 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, making it the fifth-largest source of U.S. oil. Militant members of the 8-million person Ijaw tribe that dominates the delta have long agitated for a greater share of oil wealth. Ebipadei has claimed responsibility for a spate of attacks that included the kidnapping of the four foreigners from a Shell oil platform last week. A major Shell pipeline leading was blown up the next day and more attacks followed in other areas.
The attacks have cut the OPEC-member nation's crude output by nearly 10 percent. Shell has evacuated hundreds of workers since the unrest began.
Ebipadei said negotiators sent by the government to secure the hostages' release "are traitors to the Ijaw cause and we're not ready to deal with them." Officials nonetheless expressed optimism about negotiations. "People are pleading with them, and the pleas are beginning to reach them," state government spokesman Ekiyor Welson said.
On Friday, the State Department called for the release of the four captives, while a British diplomat said his country was pressing Nigeria not to use force to free them.
| If the hostages die, however, the kidnappers need to be hunted down. It would be a good job for the SAS. |
Britain's Press Association has identified the kidnapped Briton as Nigel Watson-Clark, a former paratrooper and father of three from Saltford who was working as a security officer.