Posts Tagged ‘Ken Saro-Wiwa’

Activists campaigning against Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean may be concerned at this development.

18 September 2011

By John Donovan

Hakluyt, the London corporate intelligence firm, which has been closely associated with Royal Dutch Shell, has recently opened a bureau in New York.

Titled Shell directors have been major shareholders in Haklut & Company Limited and were at one time the ultimate spymasters heading the company and an associated oversight foundation.

Ian Forbes McCredie OBE, the former/current MI6 senior official, who until December 2010 headed up Shell Corporate Security, has recently returned to the Hakluyt/MI6 spy nest.

Shell has used Hakluyt to carry out sinister undercover operations against its perceived enemies, including Greenpeace and Body Shop.

A Hakluyt operative, a serving German secret service agent working on a freelance basis, also carried out an elaborate operation in Nigeria directed against friends of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the activist leader hanged by the corrupt Nigerian regime armed by Shell.

SHELL CONNECTION WITH HAKLUYT & COMPANY LIMITED – THE EVIDENCE

Activists campaigning against Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean may be concerned at this development. Shell has used a private security firm to intimidate activists campaigning against the Corrib Gas Project in Ireland.

Shell has a track record of being involved in corporate espionage in the USA.

On 12 September 2001, under the headline: “No Secret’s Safe From These Sharp Eyes”, The New York Times published an article focused on corporate “cloak-and-dagger escapades”. Mr Stephen J. Wade, an executive of Shell International Exploration and Production, a Royal Dutch/Shell Group business, was revealed as being a “competitive intelligence analyst — management-speak for corporate America’s equivalent of a spy”. The report said that Mr. Wade “uses every trick in the book” and “may even dish out erroneous information…” Mr Wade was quoted as commenting: It isn’t James Bond. The article went on to say: “Still, like any good spy, Mr. Wade declined to give detailed examples of information gleaned this way”. It also pointed out that corporate spying “sometimes skirts ethical bounds”.

In October 2010, we broke the story: “U.S. Dept. of Defense Confirms NCIS Espionage Investigation of Shell.”

We have also reported that Shell has infiltrated agents into host governments and for good measure is also spying globally on its own employees.

Press Statement issued by Dr. Goodluck Diigbo MOSOP President/Spokesman

AUGUST 5, 2011

At a MOSOP Emergency General Meeting in Bori, headquarters of Ogoniland on August 4, 2011, MOSOP welcomes the increased awareness the UNEP report on Ogoniland is likely to create about the continued threat of possible extinction to the Ogoni people arising from oil operations in the past 55 years. However, MOSOP resolves to dispute the integrity of the UNEP Report on Ogoniland, which was paid for with $9.5 million by the polluters, including Royal-Dutch/Shell.

MOSOP President/Spokesman, Dr. Goodluck Diigbo, says MOSOP is challenging the integrity of the report, recalling an earlier confession by UNEP team leader Mike Cowing that the report has been informed by data and information solely supplied by Shell and the government, without actual study on the ground. The purported UNEP meeting with 23,000 Ogonis is only on paper, and there is no evidence to prove who attended, what review was done, agreements reached, if any and Ogonis who signed such agreements as proof of public participation as part of the Environmental Impact Assessment Study, EIAS due process.

Dr. Goodluck Diigbo
MOSOP President/Spokesman
mosoppresidentspksmn@gmail.com
Skype: MOSOP. President-Spokesman

On Wednesday Shell admitted liability for two massive oil spills in Nigeria. Ever since oil was discovered in the country in 1956, it has been a source of strife

Adam Vaughan: Thursday 4 August 2011 09.22 BST

From pages 15 & 16 of “Royal Dutch Shell and its sustainability troubles” – Background report to the Erratum of Shell’s Annual Report 2010

The report is made on behalf of Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands)
Author: Albert ten Kate: May 2011.

Ken Saro-Wiwa (10 October 1941 – 10 November 1995) was a well known Nigerian author and television producer. He was also president of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), an organization set up to defend the environmental and human rights of the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta.

In January 1993, Saro-Wiwa gathered 300,000 Ogoni to march peacefully to demand a share in oil revenues and some form of political autonomy. MOSOP also asked the oil companies, especially Shell, to begin environmental remediation and pay compensation for past damage. In May 1994, Mr. Saro-Wiwa, who had been briefly imprisoned several times before, was abducted from his home and jailed along with other MOSOP leaders in connection with the murder of four Ogoni leaders. Amnesty International adopted Saro-Wiwa, a staunch advocate of non-violence, as a prisoner of conscience. Meanwhile, the Nigerian military took control of Ogoniland subjecting people to mass arrest, rape, execution and the burning and looting of their villages. In October 1995 a military tribunal tried and convicted Saro-Wiwa of murder. Governments and citizens’ organizations worldwide condemned the trial as fraudulent, and urged the Nigerian dictator Abacha to spare Saro-Wiwa’s life. They also called upon Shell to intervene. On 10 November 1995 Saro-Wiwa and his eight co-defendants were hanged.

In 1996, the Center for Constitutional Rights and EarthRights International and other human rights lawyers sued Shell in U.S. court for their role in the repression of the Ogoni and the executions of the “Ogoni Nine”. The case Wiwa vs. Shell charged Shell with complicity in human rights abuses against Ogoni people in Nigeria. Shell financed, armed, and otherwise colluded with the Nigerian military forces that used deadly force and conducted massive, brutal raids against the Ogoni, with a motive of restarting oil operations on Ogoni territory. Shell was also allegedly involved in a strategy that resulted in the executions of the nine Ogoni leaders. The plaintiffs in the case included surviving family members of the murdered Ogoni leaders, Owens Wiwa (Ken Saro-Wiwa’s brother) who was detained and tortured for his activities on behalf of the Ogoni; and two other (relatives of) victims of violence by Nigerian troops. After thirteen years of litigation, in June 2009 the case against Shell ended in a USD 15.5 million settlement for the plaintiffs.

The settlement meant that the testimonies by witnesses were never made public. In December 2010, The Independent on Sunday gained exclusive access to witness accounts that were to be used in evidence in the case Wiwa vs Shell. One of the key witnesses due to testify was Boniface Ejiogu, Lt-Col Okuntimo’s orderly in the Internal Security Task Force, a coalition of army, navy and police. Mr Ejiogu described how, just days before the Ogoni elders were murdered, he drove with Lt-Col Okuntimo to Shell’s base in Port Harcourt, where seven large bags of money were received. On another occasion, Mr Ejiogu witnessed four bags being given by a Shell security official to Lt-Col Okuntimo at the official’s house late at night. Another witness, Raphael Kponee, also due to testify, was a policeman working for Shell. On a different occasion, he saw three bags being loaded into Lt-Col Okuntimo’s pick-up truck by his driver and another driver in front of the security building at the Shell base.

Mr Ejiogu also offers compelling evidence as to who may have murdered the four Ogoni elders at a meeting on 21 May 1994. Saro-Wiwa was due to speak but was turned away by the military. Mr Ejiogu said he heard Lt-Col Okuntimo tell his task force commander to “waste them… in the army you waste them is when you are shooting rapidly”. Within 24 hours Saro-Wiwa was arrested and charged with the murders. A Shell spokesman replied to the allegations: “Allegations concerning Okuntimo and Shell are not new. There is a lack of any credible evidence in support of these allegations. Shell Petroleum Development Corporation and Shell at the time spoke out frequently against violence and publicly condemned its use.”

Further extracts from the report will be published in the coming days.

THE COMPLETE 73 PAGE REPORT (with reference sources)

Nigerian ‘political and environmental refugee Barry Wuganaale, a member of the Ogoni people from Niger Delta in Nigeria, opposes Shell’s fracking plans. Photo: Michael Walker

April 6 2011

Melanie Gosling

and Grace Huang

WHEN Nigerian political refugee Barry Wuganaale heard on television that Shell would be fracking for gas in the Karoo, he nearly choked on his dinner.

“I was shocked. I didn’t need to think twice about opposing this. South Africa has no experience of Shell operating upstream. You know them at the pumps here, but not drilling,” Wuganaale said yesterday. “I am from the Ogoni people in the Nigeria. We know Shell. What Shell has done to the Ogoni people and to the Nigerian state, I don’t wish to be repeated on anyone.”

Describing himself as a “environment and political refugee”, Wuganaale formed the Ogoni Solidarity Forum in Cape Town. He was among about 50 protesters who gathered at Parliament yesterday to mark the handing over of the Treasure the Karoo Action Group’s written objection to Shell’s proposed fracking for gas in the Karoo. The proposal has encountered widespread opposition because of the risk to the environment.

Officials from President Jacob Zuma’s office received the document, which calls for an immediate halt to any such plans. Wuganaale and Christiaan Kargbo, also an Ogoni, carried a banner that read: “Together we can defeat oil multinationals” and “Environmental right is a human right”, with a photograph of Nigerian author and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who strongly opposed Shell’s activities in the Niger Delta. Saro-Wiwa was executed with nine other people by the Nigerian government in 1995. Wuganaale said the Ogoni people, believing Shell was behind the execution of Saro-Wiwa and the others, took legal action against the company in the United States under an American law that allows a company registered there to be charged for crimes committed in other countries.

“Shell knew they would be rubbished in court, so they settled out of court, and paid $15.5 million to the 10 families of the deceased. But the destruction of the environment, the health hazard, the poisoning of the atmosphere, these things Shell has not talked about.”

Another protester, Marilyn Lilley, said so much was known about the harmful consequences of fracking that she did not understand how the Shell initiative has got this far.

“They need a competent person in the government to assess everything. After they consider all the known scientific data, I believe it won’t go ahead. It could lead to the … destruction of the Karoo.”

Adrienne van der Merwe, born in the Karoo, said friends who farmed or owned land there worried most about the potential pollution and water shortage fracking could cause.

“Even if it will create jobs, they’re relatively short-term and will last maybe 15 years. But then the damage is done.”

Lawyer and environmental activist Lewis Pugh said: “Shell will tell you this is all clean and green. That is utter nonsense. It is lethal.”

The group’s document calls for a moratorium on all fracking as there is no national policy to define fracking or capacity to enforce compliance with conditions of approval.

The Cape Times asked Shell to comment, but had not received a reply by the time of going to press.

SOURCE ARTICLE

“STANDING UP TO GOLIATH”: The People of the Karoo in South Africa oppose Shell’s gas exploration by Lewis Pugh

Lewis Pugh, a lawyer, and an environmentalist that uses swimming to raise awareness on the impact of climate change

I want to take you back to the early 1990′s in this country. You may remember them well.  Nelson Mandela had been released.  There was euphoria in the air.  However, there was also widespread violence and deep fear. This country teetered on the brink of a civil war.  But somehow, somehow, we averted it.  It was a miracle! And it happened because we had incredible leaders.  Leaders who sought calm. Leaders who had vision.  So in spite of all the violence, they sat down and negotiated a New Constitution.

I will never forget holding the Constitution in my hands for the first time. I was a young law student at the University of Cape Town.  This was the cement that brought peace to our land.  This was the document, which held our country together.  The rights contained herein, made us one. I remember thinking to myself – never again will the Rights of South Africans be trampled upon.

Now every one of us – every man and every woman – black, white, coloured, Indian, believer and non believer – has the right to vote.  We all have the Right to Life.  And our children have the right to a basic education.  These rights are enshrined in our Constitution. These rights were the dreams of Oliver Tambo.  These rights were the dreams of Nelson Mandela.  These rights were the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi, of Desmond Tutu and of Molly Blackburn.  These rights were our dreams. People fought ­ and died ­ so that we could enjoy these rights today.

Also enshrined in our Constitution, is the Right to a Healthy Environment and the Right to Water. Our Constitution states that we have the Right to have our environment protected for the benefit of our generation and for the benefit of future generations. Fellow South Africans, let us not dishonour these rights.   Let us not dishonour those men and women who fought and died for these rights.  Let us not allow corporate greed to disrespect our Constitution and desecrate our environment.

Lewis Pugh holding up a copy of the South African constitution, a document which the Treasure the Karoo Action Group (TKAC), wish to use to stop Shell from their land

Never, ever did I think that there would be a debate in this arid country about which was more important ­ gas or water?  We can survive without gas. We cannot live without water. If we damage our limited water supply ­ and fracking will do just that ­ we will have conflict again here in South Africa.  Look around the world. Wherever you damage the environment you have conflict.

Fellow South Africans, we have had enough conflict in this land ­ now is the time for peace. A few months ago I gave a speech with former President of Costa Rica. Afterwards I asked him “Mr President, how do you balance the demands of development against the need to protect the environment?” He looked at me and said “It is not a balancing act.  It is a simple business decision.  If we cut down our forests in Costa Rica to satisfy a timber company, what will be left for our future?”

But he pointed out “It is also a moral decision.  It would be morally wrong to chop down our forests and leave nothing for my children and my grandchildren.” Ladies and gentlemen, that is what is at stake here today: Our children’s future.  And that of our children’s children.

There may be gas beneath our ground in the Karoo.  But are we prepared to destroy our environment for 5 to 10 years worth of fossil fuel and further damage our climate? Yes, people will be employed ­ but for a short while.  And when the drilling is over, and Shell have packed their bags and disappeared, then what?  Who will be there to clean up?  And what jobs will our children be able to etch out?

Now Shell will tell you that their intentions are honourable.  That fracking in the Karoo will not damage our environment.  That they will not contaminate our precious water.  That they will bring jobs to South Africa. That gas is clean and green.  And that they will help secure our energy supplies. When I hear this ­ I have one burning question.  Why should we trust them? Africa is to Shell what the Gulf of Mexico is to BP.

Shell, you have a shocking record here in Africa.  Just look at your operations in Nigeria.  You have spilt more than 9 million barrels of crude oil into the Niger Delta.  That’s twice the amount of oil that BP spilt into the Gulf of Mexico.

You were found guilty of bribing Nigerian officials ­ and to make the case go away in America – you paid an admission of guilt fine of US$48 million. And to top it all, you stand accused of being complicit in the execution of Nigeria’s leading environmental campaigner ­ Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 other activists.  If you were innocent, why did you pay US$15.5 million to the widows and children to settle the case out of Court?

Lewis Pugh, receiving a standing ovation after his speech at public hearing which Shell called to present their Environmental Management Plan for Gas Fracking in the Karoo, at Kelvin Groove, Cape Town on the 25^th of March 2011

Shell, the path you want us to take us down is not sustainable.  I have visited the Arctic for 7 summers in a row.  I have seen the tundra thawing. I have seen the retreating glaciers. And I have seen the melting sea ice. And I have seen the impact of global warming from the Himalayas all the way down to the low-lying Maldive Islands. Wherever I go ­ I see it.

Now is the time for change.  We cannot drill our way out of the energy crisis.  The era of fossil fuels is over.  We must invest in renewable energy.  And we must not delay! Shell, we look to the north of our continent and we see how people got tired of political tyranny.  We have watched as despots, who have ruled ruthlessly year after year, have been toppled in a matter of weeks.

We too are tired.  Tired of corporate tyranny.  Tired of your short term, unsustainable practices. We watched as Dr Ian Player, a game ranger from Natal, and his friends, took on Rio Tinto (one of the biggest mining companies in the world) and won. And we watched as young activists from across Europe, brought you down to your knees, when you tried to dump an enormous oilrig into the North Sea.

Shell, we do not want our Karoo to become another Niger Delta. Do not underestimate us.  Goliath can be brought down.  We are proud of what we have achieved in this young democracy ­ and we are not about to let your company come in and destroy it.

So let this be a Call to Arms to everyone across South Africa, who is sitting in the shadow of Goliath: Stand up and demand these fundamental human rights promised to you by our Constitution.  Use your voices – tweet, blog, petition, rally the weight of your neighbours and of people in power. Let us speak out from every hilltop.  Let us not go quietly into this bleak future. Let me end off by saying this – You have lit a fire in our bellies, which no man or woman can extinguish.  And if we need to, we will take this fight all the way from your petrol pumps to the very highest Court in this land.  We will take this fight from the farms and towns of the Karoo to the streets of London and Amsterdam.  And we will take this fight to every one of your shareholders.  And I have no doubt, that in the end, good will triumph over
evil.

RELATED ARTICLE: Refugee from Shell hell slams fracking

Jaipur, January 24, 2011: Vaiju Naravane

The question takes on great poignancy since the conclusion of the festival coincides, almost to the day, with hearings in the Dutch parliament on the alleged involvement of the Royal Dutch Shell company in the execution of Nigerian playwright, human rights activist and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa who was put to death with eight others after a hurried military trial in November 1995.

At his trial, Ken Saro Wiwa pointed a finger at Shell for what it had done to his people and his country: “We all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial…there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war that the Company has waged in the Delta will be called to question sooner than later and the crimes of that war be duly punished. The crime of the Company’s dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.”

Asked about her feelings on what was still going on in the Niger Delta where Shell’s anti-environmental activities have played havoc with the region’s ecosystems, noted Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adicie, who won the Orange Prize for her book on the Biafran War, told The Hindu: “I think it’s horrific, what’s going on in the Niger Delta as do most Nigerians. I think that the multinational oil companies are in collusion with the Nigerian government and I think that in some way we still have not exhibited the political will to make a difference in the Niger Delta. And it’s possible and it’s doable but it just hasn’t been done because the political will is just not there. I am hoping it will change with the elections that are coming up in April. But I do not know.”

FULL ARTICLE

(Graphics from the Guardian article: Unloveable Shell, the Goddess of Oil)

“Although Shell has extracted more than £30bn from the area, the people who live on the land survive on less than 60 pence a day, with barely any roads, schools or hospitals. Many of the Ogoni people who have spoken out against this scandal have been killed by the Nigerian state.”

By Johann Hari

At the moment, foreign victims of UK corporations are left with almost no ability to answer back

Article first published: 08 June 2006

At first glance, it seems almost comically boring, a triple dose of political Mogadon. The Company Law Reform Bill appeared for its second reading in the House of Commons yesterday, and although it’s easy to see why the biggest reform of Britain’s corporate rules in 150 years is a big deal, it’s hard to keep your mind focussed on the 900 pages of mind-numbing detail – until you realise one thing. There is a clear path running from these dry, jargon-packed pages to a human rights campaigner hanging by his neck on a rope in Nigeria and to the trashed rainforests of Indonesia.

The best guide on this long and bloody road is Hannah Ellis, chair of Britain’s Corporate Responsibility Coalition (Core). She is campaigning – with the support of more than 200 MPs and all the major human rights organisations – to have the Bill amended to include a very basic principle. “At the moment, a British company director is held responsible for losing profits, or for being corrupt,” she says. “So why shouldn’t he be held responsible for environmental or human rights abuses his company commits too?” Ellis wants to see every British company legally required to audit the impact they have on human rights and the environment every year – at the moment, many don’t even bother to look – and, crucially, for the victims of any abuses to be able to sue them in a British court.

Enter bloodied victims, stage left. At the moment, the foreign victims of British corporations are left with almost no ability to answer back. Ellis suggests a crop of corporations which might face legal action if the law was amended to make them answerable for killings and burnings abroad.

One of the most obvious contenders is Shell for its oily behaviour in the Niger Delta. Ken Saro-Wiwa, a human rights campaigner, described the effect Shell had on his community back in 1992: “Oil exploration has turned Ogoni into a wasteland: lands, stream and creeks are totally and continually polluted; the atmosphere has been poisoned.

“Acid rain, oil spillages and oil blowouts have devastated Ogonia territory.”

Not only has their environment been destroyed; the people of the Niger Delta have seen none of the profits. Although Shell has extracted more than £30bn from the area, the people who live on the land survive on less than 60 pence a day, with barely any roads, schools or hospitals. Many of the Ogoni people who have spoken out against this scandal have been killed by the Nigerian state. Shortly before he was seized on ludicrous trumped-up charges, Saro-Wiwa said: “This is it. They are going to arrest us all and execute us all for Shell.” Although Shell vociferously denies responsibility, their close business partner swiftly hanged Saro-Wiwa, and a major critic of the corporation was conveniently silenced.

It has not stopped. In a recent report, Amnesty International said that 10 years on, government security forces – protecting the interests of Shell and other oil companies – are still destroying villages that cause trouble. Even Shell Nigeria’s own former head of environmental studies, J P Van Dessel, said in 1996: “It is clear to me that Shell was devastating the area.” If the Company Law Reform Bill is amended,” Ellis says, “the Ogoni people could begin to make Shell answer their charges in a British court.

There are other alleged crimes being committed by British corporations, Ellis says, that will rebound even more terribly on us at home. For example, the world’s second-largest rainforests, in Indonesia, are being systematically destroyed by British corporations, in an act of environmental vandalism that will make the effects of global warming on our rainy island even more extreme.

Friends of the Earth recently documented that the Indonesian island of Sumatra has lost 70 per cent of its rainforest cover in the past few decades due to logging – and for what? To clear space to make palm oil, a product that you certainly have in your lipstick, bars of soap, margarine and bread. Britain is the second-biggest consumer in Europe. At the current rate of destruction, the rainforest will be almost gone in 12 years, and the orang-utan, one of our closest cousins, will be extinct.

But can the corporations responsible be held accountable under British law? No. Not our problem, guv. (Not until hurricane season, anyway). Up until very recently, the UK’s largest supermarket, Tesco, did not use any of its £2bn-a-year profits to figure out if the palm oil it sells you is sourced from the wrecked rainforests of Indonesia. They will “be ready to participate” when “the issues are clear”, they said in their explanation of why they refused to make the issue clear by checking their own supply lines. Only after massive pressure did they admit that some of their palm oil is from uncertain sources and make rote promises to look into it – but the ongoing ambiguity could make them another candidate for prosecution for potential environmental crimes if the current Bill is reformed.

At the moment, the proposed Bill asks company directors to “consider” the environmental and human rights consequences of their actions, but it puts in place no legal measures – none – to make them do so. This is the classic New Labour approach to corporate abuse, which is to stress voluntary adherence to voluntary codes. But how many people would follow Asbos if they were voluntary? Has anybody suggested the new measures on knife crime should be up to the whim of the offender, on the grounds that young thugs can be “trusted” to see the rules are “in their own best interests”?

Corporate CEOs will only ever respond to the bottom line, and it is preposterously naïve, at best, to suggest otherwise. If they do not deliver maximum profits to their shareholders, they will be sacked and replaced with somebody who will. The only way to make them behave better is to make it cost. A lot. Mega-bucks prosecutions from their victims in the corruption-free British courts are one way to make it happen. But the Government – bowing to corporate pressure – still clings to its belief in a unified globalised economy where there is only fractured, localised legal responsibility. This is virtually a charter for corporate abuse.

At his show-trial, Ken Saro-Wiwa warned: “I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial too … for there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war that the company has waged in the Delta will be called into question sooner or later, and the crimes of that war will be duly punished.”

If we amend that dry, dull Bill sitting in the House of Commons, we may yet wring some hope from Wiwa’s dying cry.

j.hari@independent.co.uk

FROM A FORMER EMPLOYEE OF SHELL OIL USA

No matter your opinion about Wiki-leaks and the founder of that organization, there is little doubt that the latest revelations regarding the degree of infiltration of Royal Dutch Shell into the Nigerian government have been potentially a great service to the people of Nigeria.

The release of these documents is also a PR nightmare for RD Shell. Does anyone now believe RD Shell management about the level of their involvement in the framing and execution/murder of Ken Sara Wiwa ? Clearly, RD Shell management knew exactly who was doing what and when. And they knew the Sara Wiwa was a target long before his arrest. Yet they did nothing, and warned no one of the governments plans. Appears like collusion to me.

And then there is the massive amount of bribery of Nigerian officials, in which Shell played a significant role. Given RD Shell’s level of knowledge of governmental affairs, those bribes most certainly were highly targeted pay-offs.

RD Shell has constantly and continuously lied to the public, its employees, and the shareholders of the company about the level of corporate involvement in Nigeria governmental affairs.

Given RD Shell’s successes derived from the level of penetration in the Nigerian government it is only natural and obvious that RD Shell management would try the same sort of thing elsewhere. That brings to mind the Gale Norton affair and the MMS ‘sex and drugs’ scandal, in the USA, not to mention the involvement of the FBI in their cyber surveillance operations. We only need note that that the bribery charges against Shell came after the Bush administration left office. And there there are the revelations from DoD attorneys that Shell in under investigation for espionage. My, my.

I wonder which other governments the RD Shell may have deliberately targeted and penetrated? The Irish government perhaps?

So much for RD Shell guiding business principles.

All of this gives you pause for thought, but is anyone really surprised? Be honest. I think not. My hat is off to Wiki-leaks for releasing these particular documents.

The Independent on Sunday

Sunday, 5 December 2010: By Andy Rowell and Eveline Lubbers

Ken Saro-Wiwa was framed, secret evidence shows

Compelling new evidence suggests the Nigerian military killed four Ogoni elders whose murders led to the execution of the playwright and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995.

The evidence also reveals that the notorious military commander Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Okuntimo, whose troops were implicated in murder and rape, was in the pay of Shell at the time of the killings and was driven around in a Shell vehicle.

Since the time of Saro-Wiwa’s death, Shell has insisted that it had no financial relationship with the Nigerian military, although it has admitted paying it “field allowances” on two occasions. It has consistently denied any widespread collusion and payments. However, The Independent on Sunday has gained exclusive access to witness accounts that were to be used in evidence in the case of Wiwa vs Shell, brought by Ken Saro-Wiwa’s family. The case was settled last May for $15.5m, just days before it was due to start in New York. The settlement meant the testimonies were never made public.

They provide fresh insight into Shell’s financial and logistical involvement with the Nigerian military and with Lt-Col Okuntimo.

One of the key witnesses due to testify was Boniface Ejiogu, Lt-Col Okuntimo’s orderly in the Internal Security Task Force, a coalition of army, navy and police. Mr Ejiogu testified to standing guard as victims were raped and tortured while Lt-Col Okuntimo was in command. Asked if he ever saw his commander receive money from Shell, he said he witnessed it on two occasions.

Mr Ejiogu described in detail how, just days before the Ogoni elders were murdered, he drove with Lt-Col Okuntimo to Shell’s base in Port Harcourt, where the officer received seven large bags of money. “I was there when other soldiers were carrying the Ghana Must Go bags,” he testified. The bags were so heavy the soldiers had difficulty carrying them, and one fell open. “The thing opened,” Mr Ejiogu said. “I saw it was money in bundles. He said, wow, this is money. I say, yes man, it is money.”

On another occasion, Mr Ejiogu witnessed four bags being given by a Shell security official to Lt-Col Okuntimo at the official’s house late at night.

Another witness, Raphael Kponee, also due to testify, was a policeman working for Shell. On a different occasion, he saw three bags being loaded into Lt-Col Okuntimo’s pick-up truck by his driver and another driver in front of the security building at the Shell base. Shell officials have admitted that money was paid to the officer, but purely as field allowances for his men, who were protecting Shell property in Ogoniland.

MrEjiogu also offers compelling evidence as to who may have murdered the four Ogoni elders at a meeting on 21 May 1994. Saro-Wiwa was due to speak but was turned away by the military. Mr Ejiogu said he heard Lt-Col Okuntimo tell his task force commander to “waste them… in the army you waste them is when you are shooting rapidly”.

Within 24 hours Saro-Wiwa was arrested and charged with the murders. It was implied that he had had the elders killed because of their moderate stance on Ogoni issues. Despite an international outcry, he was hanged in November 1995, following a sham trial described by the then British prime minister, John Major, as “judicial murder”.

A Shell spokesman said yesterday: “Allegations concerning Okuntimo and Shell are not new. There is a lack of any credible evidence in support of these allegations. Shell Petroleum Development Corporation and Shell at the time spoke out frequently against violence and publicly condemned its use.”

Selection of comments published with article:

ROYAL DUTCH SHELL SETTLEMENT OF WIWA COURT CASE