Oil Workers Taken Hostage in Nigeria

(Lagos, Nigeria) Three boats carrying armed men stormed a servicing vessel at a Royal Dutch Shell-operated offshore oil field and took four workers hostage. Reporting is sketchy regarding the names and the nationalities of the hostages. Unconfirmed as kidnapped are:

Milko Nichev - Bulgarian

Pat Crawlay - UK

Nigel Watson-Clark - UK

Other nationalities mentioned are American, Hungarian, and Honduran. (Source)


[Update 0600 EST]

Little-Known Group Claims Responsibility

From Novinite.com:

In an e-mail message, whose authenticity has not been verified, the group, calling itself the Martyrs' Brigade, demands for the release from prison of a former governor from a state in the southern delta of Niger.

The group, which says to be a breakaway faction of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, also claimed responsibility for the attack on the pipeline operated by Royal Dutch Shell, for which the four hostages worked.

All four hostages, who are believed to be Bulgarian Milko Nichev, a Honduran, an American and a Briton, were employed by Nigerian company Tidex, which is a subsidiary of the American company.

A spokesman for Shell Oil indicated that the four were a Honduran, a Bulgarian, a Briton and an American. The reporting continues to conflict.


[Update 1930 EST]

From the Scotsman, there's confirmation that Mr. Nigel Watson-Clark is one of the hostages.

During a phone call to the Associated Press in Lagos, Nigel Watson-Clark, a former paratrooper and father of three from Saltford, near Bath, said: "They're treating us fine.

They want control of their oilfields and the release of (militia leader Mujahid) Dokubo-Asari."

The kidnapping of the four oil service workers was directed by a man named Brutus Etikpaden who indicated that his group would fight any rescue attempt and the hostages would die in the crossfire.

To prove his group was holding the hostages, Etikpaden passed the phone to two of the men he said his group had abducted - one identified himself as American, the other as Mr Watson-Clark.

The report doesn't name the American.


[Update 01/14/06, 0800 EST]

Followup post.