{"id":23094,"date":"2019-10-04T19:33:27","date_gmt":"2019-10-04T19:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=23094"},"modified":"2019-10-04T19:39:15","modified_gmt":"2019-10-04T19:39:15","slug":"twenty-years-after-shells-role-in-the-execution-of-ken-saro-wiwa-others-under-scrutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=23094","title":{"rendered":"Twenty Years After: Shell&#8217;s Role in the Execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, Others Under Judicial Scrutiny"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.alternativeadvert.com\/show.php?z=30&amp;pl=19231&amp;ad_type=81&amp;rl=1800\" width=\"336\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A witness hearing examining Shell\u2019s role in the\u00a0execution of nine men in Nigeria in the 1990s\u00a0is a key opportunity to hold the oil giant to account over its alleged complicity in human rights abuses, Amnesty International said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The\u00a0<em>Kiobel v Shell<\/em>\u00a0case resumes at The Hague on 8 October and will for the first time hear accounts from individuals who accuse Shell of offering them bribes to give fake testimonies that led to the \u2018Ogoni Nine\u2019 \u2013 who included Esther Kiobel\u2019s husband \u2013 being sentenced to death and executed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor more than twenty years Shell has escaped scrutiny over its role in these tragic events. We applaud the courage and persistence of Esther Kiobel and the other women who have brought this case,\u201d said Mark Dummett, Business and Human Rights Researcher at Amnesty International.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis case exemplifies how hard it can be for the victims of human rights abuses to hold a powerful multinational corporation to account.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Esther Kiobel and three other women \u2013 Victoria Bera, Blessing Eawo and Charity Levula \u2013 accuse Shell of being complicit in the unlawful arrest, detention and execution of their husbands. The men were hanged in 1995 along with renowned activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and four other men after they were convicted in a blatantly unfair trial.<\/p>\n<p>The \u2018Ogoni Nine\u2019, as they were known, were accused of being involved in the murder of four Ogoni chiefs known to be opponents of\u00a0the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). Led by Ken Saro-Wiwa, MOSOP had protested against oil pollution caused by Shell\u2019s operations in the Ogoniland region.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese four Nigerian widows represent the cause of the Ogoni Nine, as well as countless residents of the Niger Delta who feel that their rights have been trampled on by Shell,\u201d said Mark Dummett.<\/p>\n<p>Amnesty supported Esther Kiobel\u2019s legal team to bring the case to the Netherlands in 2017, and detailed Shell\u2019s role in the arrests and executions in a briefing,\u00a0In The Dock.<\/p>\n<p>At the case\u2019s first hearing in February 2019, Esther Kiobel and Victoria Bera were both allowed to speak to the court and gave moving testimonies regarding their late husbands and subsequent struggles for justice. It was the first time either had had such an opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>On 1 May, the court ruled in favour of the plaintiffs, that it did have jurisdiction of the case and that this should not be time barred. It also ruled that Shell should hand over some confidential internal documents to the plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers.<\/p>\n<p>The court, however, did not order Shell to release other confidential internal documents, which were requested by Esther Kiobel\u2019s legal team.\u00a0 It also dismissed some of the other important allegations made by the plaintiffs, relating to Shell\u2019s close ties with the Nigerian government and the extent to which the company supported a crackdown by the military against the Ogoni people in the 1990s. This resulted in a large but unknown number of people being killed, detained, raped and tortured.<\/p>\n<p>Shell disputes all allegations and argued that the court should also dismiss the claim on jurisdictional grounds and because the events took place so long ago.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.alternativeadvert.com\/show.php?z=30&amp;pl=19231&amp;ad_type=81&amp;rl=1800\" width=\"336\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A witness hearing examining Shell\u2019s role in the\u00a0execution of nine men in Nigeria in the 1990s\u00a0is a key opportunity to hold the oil giant to account over its alleged complicity in human rights abuses, Amnesty International said. The\u00a0Kiobel v Shell\u00a0case resumes at The Hague on 8 October and will for the first time hear accounts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":23095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[4097,332,5631,344],"class_list":["post-23094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","tag-esther-kiobel","tag-ken-saro-wiwa","tag-movement-for-the-survival-of-the-ogoni-people-mosop","tag-ogoniland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/shell.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-60u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23094"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23099,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23094\/revisions\/23099"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}