Captors release hostages' pic
2006-01-27 19:41
Lagos - Nigerian security officials on Friday released a photograph of four western hostages, which had been passed to them by separatist militants, 16 days after the oil workers were abducted.
The image, believed to be several days old, showed the four men sitting on plastic chairs in a grove of oil palms and guarded by three guerrilla fighters, at least one of whom was armed with an assault rifle.
It was the first evidence that the men were being properly treated since January 19, after they were allowed to call their employers. Nigerian agents released it to the media.
The picture showed British security expert Nigel Watson-Clark, Honduran engineer Harry Ebanks, US boat skipper Patrick Landry and their Bulgarian colleague Milko Nichev.
Each man had a bottle containing orange liquid set in the sand before their chair and all appeared to be uninjured.
They were captured on January 11 by an armed gang of ethnic Ijaw militants, which stormed the oil supply vessel Liberty Service as it worked for the energy giant, Shell, in an Atlantic offshore field.
The gang had demanded $1.5bn from Shell to compensate Ijaw communities polluted by the oil industry and the release of two local ethnic leaders being held by Nigerian authorities.