Excerpts from Ken Saro-Wiwa's last statement to the court Oct. 31,1995 that sentenced him to death, and from an interview with the Guardian newspaper published in Lagos, Nigeria.

Statement to the court: "After all your judgment, convicting me is a mere formality. From the second day of the killing of the fourth prominent Ogoni son, I've been adjudged guilty. "Today is certainly a black day for the black man. In the course of the trial, I have been brutalized, my family almost ruined. I am a man of ideas in and out of prison -- my ideas will live."

Guardian newspaper interview: Saro-Wiwa said he would like to die "in bed, dreaming." "My only regret is that I was ever born a minority in Nigeria." And how would he like his epitaph to read? "Here lies the gentle, sweet man Nigeria loved to cheat. They denied him even in death the normal six feet of earth."