UK oil workers "told they would be sacrificed"

LONDON, Oct 23 (Reuters) A group of British oil workers held hostage in Nigeria told of their ordeal today which included threats they would be ''sacrificed'' and having to lie that a colleague had died.

Graeme Buchan told a news conference in Aberdeen that he had been forced at gunpoint to tell his bosses that colleague Paul Smith had died. The false news had then been passed on to the man's distraught wife and young son.

The men were speaking after being released on the weekend from nearly three weeks of captivity during which they were beaten, tortured and held in basic conditions with little food.

Buchan said the lowest point had been when they were told they were to be sacrificed at a festival the following day.

The men, working for Sparrows Offshore Services Limited, had been kidnapped at gunpoint on October 3 while sitting in a bar in a secure residential compound for expatriate contractors.

Seven foreign workers, including four Britons, one Romanian, one Malaysian and an Indonesian were driven on an eight-hour boat journey before arriving at a makeshift camp.

They were held hostage in the southern Niger Delta in basic conditions, sleeping under tarpaulin, where it was ''hot by day, cold at night and wet all the time''.

They survived on rice and water but every day feared they would get malaria.

The Britons, including Sandy Cruden and George McLean, had kept each others' spirits up by talking about ''home, food, families, food, football.'' During the first 10 days they had been threatened with violence but not beaten by their captors who ''seemed to be heavy drug users''. This then changed, the hostage-takers become panicky and the captives were separated and beaten with sticks and slapped with machetes.

''At that stage, we did become more concerned,'' Buchan said.

A low point came when he was ordered, with a gun to his head, to say that Smith had died.

''On Thursday morning I was beaten and ordered at gunpoint to phone,'' Buchan said. ''I am afraid the gun at my head may have uncovered a talent for acting I did not know I had.'' The Niger Delta, a vast wetlands region home to Africa's biggest oil industry, has been plagued by attacks on oil facilities and abductions of oil workers this year.

Reuters AB DB2105