A British-based firm insisted for years that its tanker was not to blame for poisoning thousands in West Africa

ON a July day in 2006, workers at the port in Amsterdam began their usual task of removing "slop" from a ship that had sailed to the Netherlands from Algeciras in Spain. As they pumped wastefrom the Probo Koala- a vessel chartered to the British-based oil trading company
Trafigura - they were expecting the usual mix of water and oil left over from the tank after it had been washed down with water.

But the workers, employed by Dutch company Amsterdam Port Services (APS), noticed the waste was different from the ordinary material they were used to dealing with. Pitch black in colour, it gave off such a vile smell that some of the workers became sick, attracting the attention of the environmental authorities.

APS refused to continue disposing of the pungent waste unless its payment was increased. Refusing to pay the extra, Trafigura decided to pump the material back on board the ship. The Probo Koala then set sail again, carrying its foul-smelling cargo to West Africa. As the ship made its way to the Ivorian port of Abidjan, a company with no previous expe- rience in waste removal obtained the licence to handle the highly toxic material - for a sum 20 times less than the amount demanded by APS in Amsterdam.

The Probo Koala docked in Abidjan on Aug 19, 2006. In darkness at least 12 hired lorries began carrying loads from the ship's 400 tonnes of waste to as many as 18 sites around the city. As the sludge was emptied out into roads and sewers, crowds starting to form, protesting at the stench, forcing truck drivers to abandon their work. Over the following
weeks, thousands of residents in Abidjan found themselves choking and coughing, some vomiting. At least 10 are said to have died from sickness.