Case accuses Shell of complicity in human rights atrocities
Charles Wiwa is a nephew of the Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. He’s part of a group of Nigerian refugees involved in suing the Royal Dutch Shell oil company. (Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune / March 12, 2012)
Mary Schmich: March 18, 2012Charles Wiwa’s old friends from Ogoniland picked him up at his South Side Chicago home a couple of weeks ago in a Chevy Venture van, and they hit the road.
Destination: the Supreme Court of the United States.
Wiwa had been in court before, like the time back in Nigeria when his famous uncle, Ken Saro-Wiwa, was sentenced to death, but he’d certainly never been to the highest court in this country.He was excited. So were his friends. Their class-action lawsuit against the Royal Dutch Shell oil company had made it to Washington, D.C., and they were determined to be there too.
I-94 to I-80 to I-76, they talked the whole way.
They talked about the place they grew up, a small, humid pocket of the Niger Delta, where electricity was rare and if you read at night, it was by moonlight, a place where water came from wells and generations of families stayed close even after oil changed everything.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
