Shell pays 15.5 mil to stop trial exposing role in executions
Who knew it was so bloody selling oil? I mean, other than every human watching the middle east, that is.
Shell will pay $15.5m to settle Nigerian human rights lawsuit
A landmark human rights lawsuit accusing Royal Dutch Shell of complicity in the execution of author and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa some 14 years ago, will be settled for $15.5 million just days before its trial was set to begin.
The company called its payment a “humanitarian gesture” in a statement published by The New York Times.
They claimed Shell was complicit in the 1995 military executions of nine activist leaders, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, though the company continued to deny the allegation on Monday.
“Shell began oil production in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria in 1958,” the groups said on a Web site dedicated to promoting the suit. “After more than 30 years of environmental devastation and exploitation by Shell, a popular nonviolent movement of the Ogoni people developed in the early 1990s in opposition to its presence in the region. At the request of Shell, and with Shell’s assistance and financing, Nigerian soldiers used deadly force and massive, brutal raids against the Ogoni people throughout the early 1990s to repress the growing movement against the oil company.”</em>
Sickening. And sickening that they are off the hook for stagemanaging slaughter, for the amount of money they rake in during the time it took me to type this sentence.
