Nigerians had hoped to use US Alien Tort Statute to sue Royal Dutch Petroleum over the deaths of nine protesters in the 1990s
The supreme court has blocked a group of Nigerians from suing the oil giant Shell in US court for allegedly aiding in torture and murder in a ruling that human rights experts warned could limit the ability to bring such cases in the US.
In a unanimous ruling, the justices stopped a case filed by Nigerian activists now living in the US who allege that in the 1990s Royal Dutch Petroleum was complicit in the the torture and murder of protesters at the company’s Shell Oil operations in the Ogoni region.