PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - What's New In W. Africa (Nigeria)
View Single Post
Old 24th Oct 2006, 05:33
  #1286 (permalink)  
Mama Mangrove
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: THE MANGROVE SWAMPS (RETIRED)
Posts: 201
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Oil worker tells of kidnap ordeal

I'm glad to hear that Bristow are doing the right thing and looking after the families of the men who were murdered.

Here's an account from one of the other hostages of what they suffered:

A kidnapped British oil worker has told how he was ordered at gunpoint to tell his bosses that one of his colleagues had died in captivity.

Graeme Buchan was one of seven oil workers freed by Nigerian militants at the weekend after being held hostage for nearly three weeks.

After his return to Britain on Monday, Mr Buchan said he was beaten and forced to call the chief executive of his employers to falsely say that his colleague Paul Smith was dead.

He told a press conference in Aberdeen: "I'm afraid the gun at my head may have uncovered a talent for acting I didn't know I had."

The claims of Mr Smith's death were passed on to his devastated wife who told their four-year-old son that his father was dead.

She said on Sunday she was "hysterical" when her husband phoned home to say he was alive and had been released.

Scots Mr Buchan, Mr Smith, Sandy Cruden and George McLean were among seven men seized from the Exxon Mobil compound in Port Harcourt on October 3.

Mr Smith, 32, and Mr Cruden, 45, appeared along with Mr Buchan, 30, at the press conference at Aberdeen Airport.

Speaking on behalf of his colleagues, Mr Buchan described how they were beaten with sticks, slapped with machetes and feared they might never see their families again. He said the lowest point was when the men's captors told them they were to be taken to a festival to be sacrificed.

The men, who are all from the north east of Scotland and were released on Saturday, work for Aberdeen-based Sparrows Offshore Ltd. They were taken hostage with another Scot and three others when armed kidnappers stormed a bar in their Exxon Mobil compound in Eket.
If Exxon/Mobil have the attitude they do, I hope they can't find anyone willing to work for them as a contractor and have to leave Nigeria
Mama Mangrove is offline