Word: biafra
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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...
...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...
...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...
After he returned home from Biafra last year, Von Rosen continued to worry about the underdog. Resuming routine hauls for Transair Sweden, the count commenced secret military planning on the side. Since he will be 60 years old this summer and can no longer fly commercially as a captain, Von Rosen talked about opening a flight school; on this premise, he approached Malmö Flygindustri, builders of the MFI-9B, and received permission to take up one of the trainers for familiarization flights. He searched quietly for pilots and demanded, with reason, that they be experienced. Studying press photographs...
...Odumegwu Ojukwu appointed Von Rosen an air force colonel and approved an additional $140,000 for refitting the planes in friendly Gabon and for the pilots' salaries. Finally Von Rosen told his wife Gunvor of his plans-up to a point. "He told me he was going to Biafra," Countess von Rosen said last week, "but he didn't say he would be bombing MIGs...