LAGOS -- Nigeria has paraded 15 Filipinos arrested last week for allegedly stealing crude oil from the country's oil-rich Niger Delta, a military spokesman said Friday.

"The Filipinos were shown to journalists in Effurun, near Warri yesterday," Joint Task Force (JTF) spokesman Major Omale Ochagwuba told Agence France-Presse.

The Filipinos were arrested with a foreign vessel, MT Lina Panama, laden with stolen crude at Brass as they attempted to leave Nigerian territorial waters.

The independent newspaper The Nation showed the photograph of the Filipinos in its Friday edition.

The paper quoted Rev Chavez, the ship's captain, as saying they knew nothing about the stolen crude and that they were in fact the victims of an attack by pirates in the region.

Chavez said they were on their way to Angola from Cotonou, the capital of Benin, when they were attacked.

"On July 10, at about nine in the morning, at somewhere close to the mouth of River Niger, two suspicious boats attacked us and the youths hauled themselves into the vessel with ropes and tried to stop the vessel," he said.

"We had nothing in the mouth of the river because were only passing by when the youths attacked us. We were in the room where they locked us up for several hours before we were rescued by Nigerian armed forces who took us out of the cabin," he added.

The stealing of crude oil from the Niger Delta by armed gangs, pirates and their foreign collaborators costs Nigeria millions of dollars in lost revenue every year.

The past two years have seen an upsurge in militant activities in the region with frequent attacks on foreign oil companies and a wave of kidnappings of expatriate employees.