A ground-breaking lawsuit against a major multinational oil corporation accused of complicity in serious abuses of human rights in Nigeria has passed a major judicial hurdle and moved a big step closer to trial.

In an opinion received by the parties to the suit this week, United States Federal Court Judge Kimba Wood denied a motion brought by Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum Company to dismiss the case filed by the families of renowned Nigerian writer, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and eight other Ogoni activists who were hanged by the Nigerian military government in 1995.

As a result, the plaintiffs can now move to "discovery," which will allow them to gather evidence from Shell and other defendants that may help them prove charges that Shell cooperated with the military government in the persecution and eventual execution of the Ogoni activists.

"This ruling means that the families of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his Ogoni colleagues may yet get some measure of justice for the unlawful executions and other abuses in which Shell was complicit," said Richard Herz, an attorney with EarthRights International, who is co-counsel in the case.

"More broadly, it sends a strong message to other multinational companies that they cannot participate in egregious human rights abuses with impunity," said Herz Tuesday.

A spokesperson reached at Shell's U.S. headquarters in Texas said she was unaware of Wood's ruling but would try to get a statement. None was available before publication.

The Ogoni case, which has gone through several twists and turns, was the first of several in which members of minority groups in oil-producing countries have sued oil companies active in their region for human rights abuses under the Alien Tort Claims Act, an anti-piracy statute which is now more than 200 years old, and the more recent Torture Victim Protection Act.

Both laws make it possible for non-citizens to sue foreign individuals or companies in U.S. courts for serious human rights abuses, so long as the defendants can be found on U.S. territory.

In addition to the Ogoni-Shell case, suits have been filed against Exxon-Mobil by people from Indonesia's embattled Aceh province, against Unocal by members of ethnic minorities in Myanmar (formerly Burma); against Chevron-Texaco by other Nigerian groups, and against Texaco by Ecuadorian indigenous communities.

The specific abuses charged in the Ogoni lawsuit rest on allegations that Shell, its Nigerian subsidiary, and John Anderson, the former head of that subsidiary, conspired with the military government to arrest and convict Saro-Wiwa and eight other members of the rights group Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People whose land in the oil-rich Niger Delta remains crisscrossed and badly polluted by oil pipelines and other infrastructure.

The suit also alleges that Shell provided material and other support to the military in what environmental groups like the Sierra Club have characterized as a "scorched-earth campaign" against Ogoni communities which opposed local oil operations. One of the plaintiffs, "Jane Doe," was beaten and shot by Nigerian army troops in one raid.

In his last statement to the military tribunal which convicted him of murdering Ogoni rivals, Saro-Wiwa, whose execution provoked international outrage, warned that Shell would come to regret its actions. "Shell is here on trial," he said. "The Company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come."

Shell won a dismissal from Wood in the case in 1998 when she found that Britain would be a more convenient forum for the trial. But the Court of Appeals overruled that decision two years later. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Shell's appeal to hear the case, which sent it back to Wood.

Not only did she rule that the case could proceed on the basis of the two anti-torture statutes, but she also permitted another claim--under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, often applied against criminal organizations which try to bribe jurors or suborn perjury--to proceed against Shell.

She also found that the facts of the case as alleged by the plaintiffs could constitute "crimes against humanity" under the definition of the 1998 Rome Treaty which creates an International Criminal Court.

"Human rights law doesn't apply only to governments and individuals; multinational corporations also must be held accountable when they violate such fundamental international legal principles," said Jennie Green, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is also co-counsel on the case.

Copyright © 2002 OneWorld.net

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