Reprieve for Eighteen

For 18 white men, Europe is aroused.

What have they said about our millions? Eighteen white men assisting in the crime of genocide. What do they say about our murdered innocents? How many black dead make one missing white? Mathematicians, please answer me. Is it infinity?

The voice of General Odumegwu Ojukwu, carried by Radio Biafra, vibrated between impassioned outrage and constrained eloquence. The 18 men that Biafra's boss referred to--14 Italians, three West Germans and a Lebanese --were employees of the Italian government's oil combine, ENI. They were captured last month by Biafran troops in the Okpai oilfields near Port Harcourt in an encounter in which eleven other oil workers (ten Italians and a Jordanian) were killed. Later a five-man Biafran tribunal that sits for security cases condemned the 18 prisoners to death by firing squad for helping Nigeria wage war. Once the sentences were announced, Ojukwu was besieged by clemency pleas from Italy, West Germany, Portugal, Gabon, the Ivory Coast and the Vatican. Some Italians proposed armed intervention to free the men.

Dawn Raid. Exactly how much fighting, if any, the oil crew had engaged in was by no means clear. The Biafrans accused them of putting out markers to indicate Biafran positions and of leading Nigerian forces. Other sources related the incident differently. A Nigerian watchman in the oil camp, who survived by hiding under a truck, maintained that Biafran commandos attacked the camp in a surprise dawn raid. They sprayed it with automatic-weapons fire and shot down the eleven who were killed as they emerged from their bunkhouses to see what was happening.

Whatever happened, Biafrans resent the foreigners for working in Nigeria for ENl's marketing arm, AGIP. Ojukwu is convinced that without the oil royalties Nigeria receives from continuing drilling operations, his cash-short enemy would soon be brought to the negotiating table. "Oilmen are more dangerous than mercenaries," Biafran Information Minister Ifegwu Eke said last week. "These are the people responsible for our suffering."

De Facto Recognition. Ojukwu treated the men correctly however. Three lawyers defended them at their trial, they received food forwarded by the Vatican and were visited by the Rt. Rev. Godfrey Okoye, Roman Catholic bishop of Port Harcourt. Ojukwu, however, refused to discuss their plight with ENI but insisted that the Italian government --which does not recognize Biafra --speak in their behalf. He got his way when Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Mario Pedini flew into Owerri to negotiate, thus giving Biafra at least temporary de facto recognition that irritated opposing Nigeria.

Last week, giving in to the storm of clemency petitions, Ojukwu announced that the sentences of the 18 "nonindigenous collaborators" were being commuted and they were allowed to leave the country. Ojukwu, a Catholic himself, had been moved by Pope Paul's pleas for mercy, according to the Biafran government. But what obviously moved Biafra's leader most of all was the fact that three of the most earnest pleaders--Gabon, the Ivory Coast and Portugal--provide the staging areas from which arms or food supplies reach Biafra.

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