Drilling and Killing: Landmark Trial Against Chevron Begins Over its Role in the Niger Delta

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted October 29, 2008.

Amy Goodman: A landmark trial has begun against the oil giant Chevron. A San Francisco district court is hearing a case brought by Nigerian plaintiffs who accuse Chevron of recruiting and supplying Nigerian military forces involved in a May 1998 shooting and killing of protesters in the oil-rich Niger Delta. The protesters were occupying a Chevron-owned oil platform called the Parabe platform, demanding jobs and compensation for environmental damage to their communities.

Soon after landing in Chevron-leased helicopters, the Nigerian military shot to death two protesters and wounded several others. The eleven activists were detained for three weeks, thrown into the notorious Nigerian jails. During their imprisonment, one activist said he was handcuffed and hung from a ceiling fan hook for hours for refusing to sign a statement written by Nigerian federal authorities. Chevron claims force was used to defend the platform from a violent assault and hostage-taking by the protesters.

Chevron is being sued under the Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows foreign nationals to take legal action over crimes against them overseas.

In a moment, we'll be joined by two human rights activists involved in the case, but first I want to turn to an excerpt of the documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship. Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill and I traveled to the Niger Delta to investigate Chevron's role in the killings in 1998. In the documentary, a Chevron official acknowledged to us that on May 28, 1998, the company transported Nigerian soldiers to the Parabe oil platform. This is an excerpt of Drilling & Killing.

Amy Goodman: Until now, Chevron has claimed that its only action against the occupation was to call the federal authorities and tell them what was happening. But in a startling admission in a three-hour interview with Democracy Now!, Chevron spokesperson Sola Omole acknowledged that Chevron did much more. He admitted that Chevron actually flew in the soldiers who did the killing. And he further admitted that those men were from the notorious Nigerian navy.

Sola Omole: I guess --

AG: Who took them in?

SO: What's that?

AG: Who took them in?

SO: Who took them in?

AG: On Thursday morning, the Mobile Police, the navy?

SO: We did. We did. We did. We, Chevron, did. We took them there.

AG: By how?

SO: Helicopters. Yes, we took them in.

AG: Who authorized the call for the military to come in?

SO: Chevron's management.

Jeremy Scahill: Chevron's management. So, Chevron authorized the call for the military and transported the navy to the barge. On top of that, Chevron's acting head of security, James Neku, flew in with the military the day of the attack.

AG: Were you on that helicopter?

James Neku: Yes, I was in the helicopter.

AG: And how many people were there in that helicopter?

JN: That helicopter had seven -- six of us. There were six of us, six officers.

AG: Including the Chevron pilot or not including?

JN: I think excluding the pilot. Including the pilot would be seven.

AG: And then, was it a mix of navy and --

JN: A mix of navy and the police. The police were armed with tear smokes.

AG: Was it the regular police or the Mobile Police?

JN: Mobile Police.

AG: The Mobile Police, also known as the kill 'n' go. That's the kill and go. Shell Oil, the largest producer of oil in Nigeria, came under heavy international condemnation in recent years for their use of the Mobile Police, forcing them to publicly renounce the use of the kill and go because of their brutal record in Ogoniland.

Oronto Douglas: They shoot without question. They kill. They maim. They rape. They destroy.

AG: Environmental lawyer Oronto Douglas was one of the lawyers on Ken Saro-Wiwa's defense team.

OD: The kill and go are a murderous band of undisciplined paramilitary Mobile Police force. Their order is to kill. When they go to a community, it's not to maintain peace, it is not to maintain order.

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Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

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