Shell facing NY trial over Nigerian executions

Source: The Independent, Ireland

Shell facing NY trial over Nigerian executions

Tuesday May 26 2009

The giant oil firm Royal Dutch Shell is due to go on trial in New York today accused of complicity in the execution of a Nigerian environmental activist in 1995.

Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other people involved in a campaign against the oil industry in Nigeria were executed following a military tribunal.

They were convicted on what were widely viewed as trumped-up charges of murdering four political rivals.

Today's trial stems from two lawsuits accusing Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and the former managing director of its Nigerian subsidiary of complicity in the decision to hang the men.

The case is being seen as a test of whether transnational companies owned or operating in the US can be held responsible for human rights abused committed abroad.



Read more: http://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/world-news/north-america/shell-facing-ny-trial-over-nigerian-executions-1750923.html

what foreign countries can do about Blackwaters antics overseas.

responsbility for the execution.


"The case is being seen as a test of whether transnational companies owned or operating in the US can be held responsible for human rights abused committed abroad."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdiction

The case may present a lot of interesting legal issues, but I do hope the court can get to the responsiblity issue, not just jurisdictional matters.

I wonder why the suit was started in NY, rather than wherever Dutch Shell is incorporated or in Nigeria, or maybe in an international tribunal of some kind.

Then New York can police them, no matter where they are acting in the world.

If the state where the company is based can't prosecute criminal behavior of a company, then who can?

:kick: