Acquiris quodcumque rapis

Ken Saro-Wiwa was the founding member and president of MOSOP, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, a grassroots organization committed to recovering the rights of the Niger Delta's Ogoni People, rights continuously overlooked by the Nigerian government and foreign oil companies in the rush for the oil and gas reserves of the Niger River Delta. In 1994, Wiwa - along with eight other members of MOSOP - was arrested by the Nigerian government following a protest against an oil pipeline. By 1995, he had been sentenced to death by a government tribunal. The tribunal was one of the most corrupt the western world has ever watched unfold: "witnesses" were bribed and threatened into falsely testifying against Saro-Wiwa, his defense lawyers - before they resigned in protest of the court's erroneous breaches of justice - were denied access to Saro-Wiwa. On 10 November 1995, "The Ogoni Nine" were executed by hanging. The following day, Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations.

What had Saro-Wiwa and his activists been protesting? the construction of a colossal oil pipeline by Royal Dutch Shell across Ogoni land. In a previous protest, Nigerian forces - called in by RDS - had killed two women as they protested the destruction of their farmland by the construction groups. In another protest in January 1993 - where RDS again called in military support - 80 people were killed and 500 homes destroyed. The history of Royal Dutch Shell's involvement in the region is one of blood-soaked corruption and brutality.

For those of us who value human rights over profits, the news on Monday that Royal Dutch Shell will be brought to trial in New York for complicity in the death of Saro-Wiwa was a welcome announcement. For many, this is the final vindication of what has been a long and violent struggle to bring justice to Ken Saro-Wiwa. In his final statement before his execution, he condemned the company's actions and foretold that they would eventually be punished.

"I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial... its day will surely come and the lessons learned here may prove useful to it, for there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war that the company has waged in the Delta will be called to question sooner than later, and the crimes of that war be duly punished. The crime of the company's dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished."

Shell now faces charged of conspiring with the Nigerian government to kill the Ogoni Nine, of financing, arming and transporting the Nigerian military, torture, crimes against humanity, inhumane treatment, and arbitrary arrest and detention. Were these crimes being brought against a person, they would be facing an extraordinarily lengthy prison sentence in The Hague. People have died for doing less than the charges brought against Royal Dutch Shell, which is why the trial - scheduled to start within the next week - is so important.

Shell has spent hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of dollars trying to make people forget about its complicity. It has tried to run from its blood-soaked past for too long. Even now, it denies involvement in a regime that it financed, armed, economically bribed and controlled, and unleashed upon the Ogoni people - most of whom live on less than a dollar a day. You cannot deny the audacity of Shell's executives, who even now attempt to run from the justice that has been coming to them for so long. In 1997 and 2002, Saro-Wiwa's son and brother attempted to sue Royal Dutch Shell for their hand in his death. Though some minor payouts were given to his family, Shell eluded justice not once, but twice.

At long last, the dreams of so many have been realized. For decades, the multinationals that dominate our economy claimed the judicial and economic rights of individuals when it was convenient, yet fled and escaped from the justice that should have been meted upon them. This trial is important because of that, because it proves that to claim the rights of a person is to claim the responsibilities of a person. If you - individually - kill, maim, and oppress a group of people, then finance someone else to kill their activists, you would spend the rest of your life in prison. Many have thus maintained that the same should be true of multinationals like Royal Dutch Shell. This trial finally accomplishes that.