This week, oil giant Shell will appear in court charged with crimes against humanity for their alleged role in the deaths of nine environmental protestors. Fourteen years ago, the leaders of the Movement of Survival for Ogoni People were executed by the Nigerian authorities for highlighting the abuses of companies like Shell, and the way that the Nigerian government was complicit in aiding their ducking of environmental regulations. Among them was Ken Saro-Wiwa, who along with being an environmental activist, was also a respected author and well known television producer.

His story takes place in a town called Ogoniland, in an area of Nigeria which is rich in oil – and it was that black gold which soon attracted corporations desperate to get their hands on it. Ken had seen his hometown being polluted and destroyed by the waste from the crude oil, and he reacted in much the same way as you would expect anyone to. He decided to make a stand, and to become an activist and protestor, while remaining at all times non-violent. He had built his reputation on novels like ‘Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English’, an anti-war tale punctuated with stories of corruption and venality, and he had produced ‘Basi & Co.’, a satirical soap opera thought to be the most watched in Africa. But some of his most moving and powerful work was written in 1995, while he awaited the verdict of the military tribunal which would eventually sentence him to be hanged.

During those last days he wrote “I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial… the company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come… 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.”

The case that Shell now have to face will not result in anybody being hanged. It is a civil lawsuit against Shell, in an American court, in which the relatives of Ken and the eight other leaders are arguing that Shell were knowing, active participants in the killing of those nine men, and the torture, shooting and exile of hundreds of other protestors.

Shell, of course, denies the claims related to the Nigerian military’s actions, but what is beyond dispute is that their presence created the situation and caused untold damage to the Nigerian environment. Their oil wells had gas flares which had been pumping toxic fumes into the atmosphere since drilling started in 1958. As Ken’s son recently pointed out, his fathers real crime was to ask “why a company that was rightly proud of its efforts to preserve the environment in the west would deny the Ogoni the same.”

The verdict of this trial is hotly anticipated by campaigners across the world, who see it as a trial where Shell can be held to account and the true meaning of corporate responsibility can be spelt out. Daleep Mukarji, the Director of Christian Aid, said “The killing of Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigeria’s dictatorship in 1995 has become a tragic emblem of the struggle of human rights in the face of unregulated business interests. Saro-Wiwa led the Ogoni people in protests against oil-exploitation and the resulting pollution and conflict. His death shone a spotlight on the deeply troubled oilfields of the Niger Delta. Many of the problems of pollution and conflict in the oilfields persist today. Shell, the operating company in Nigeria’s oil consortium and the main target of Saro-Wiwa’s protests, has failed to use its considerable influence to bring about change in the Delta. On the contrary, Shell presides over a situation in which the violence in communities around the oilfields is spiraling out of control.”

With luck, regardless of the outcome of the trial the next few weeks will focus the spotlight of the world’s media on the role of corporations in developing countries, and it will not be framed simply in economic terms. With climate change and global poverty at the forefront of our minds, the social and environmental cost must also be included in the final balance sheet.