Amnesty targets Shell over rights abuses

Amnesty International has called for Shell to be prosecuted for allegedly helping Nigeria's military to commit human rights abuses in the oil-rich south in the 1990s. The rights watchdog said the oil giant should be tried in Nigeria, as well as Britain and Netherlands where it has its head office. A report on the News24 site notes that Shell's Nigerian subsidiary strongly denied the charges, calling them ‘false and without merit’. Audrey Gaughran, director of global issues and research at Amnesty, said it was ‘indisputable that Shell played a key role’ in events in Ogoniland in the 1990s. ‘But we now believe that there are grounds for a criminal investigation,’ she added. Shell remains a major oil operator in Nigeria, accounting for much of the country's daily output of about 2m barrels a day.