Roddick: My fury over dissident

Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, and the family of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the hanged Nigerian dissident, reacted with fury and dismay yesterday to claims that he had supported violence and used oil profits to "feather his nest".

The controversy followed an essay by Richard D North, an environmental journalist, which said Mr Saro-Wiwa's past had been misrepresented by Western liberals who supported his campaign against the activities of Shell, the oil company.

Mrs Roddick said that Mr Saro-Wiwa had made the "ultimate act of courage" in dying for his belief, that the survival of his Ogoni people was being threatened by oil exploration in the Niger delta.

She accused Mr North of being duped by propaganda issued by the oil company and the Nigerian military regime. "Ken died for what he believed in," she said. "If he took a few dollars so bloody be it. He died for what he believed in and that's the ultimate act of courage."

His son, Ken Wiwa, was furious at the suggestion in the article that his father had been involved in "incitement to murder" a political rival.

"The tribunal which 'tried and sentenced' my father and the others found no evidence to back the 'incitement to murder' charge," he said. "This is th same tribunal which was condemned universally, by John Major as "judicial murder", by Michael Birnbaum, a British QC present at a portion of the trial, and by a UN investigation."

Mr North's essay was published by The Independent on the eve of a weekend of international protests to mark the first anniversary of Mr Saro-Wiwa's execution by the Nigerian government.

He said: "I am concerned with the way the Western environmental campaign lobby see the world in desperately and dangerously black-and-white terms."

Vigil for dissident, page 5