FACTBOX-Who is Henry Okah?

July 13 (Reuters) - Nigerian militant leader Henry Okah, accused of gun-running and treason, was released from jail on Monday, a federal court judge said.

Here are some key facts about Okah:

* OKAH ON TRIAL:

-- Henry Okah was the suspected leader of the rebel Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). From the end of May 2007, his forces mostly observed a ceasefire to allow peace talks with the government to go ahead.

-- Okah however refused to join the peace talks and continued to make threats and predict all-out civil war in the delta.

-- Okah was arrested in Angola in September 2007 while on a business trip and extradited to Nigeria in February 2008. Azuka Okah had said her husband was in Angola to inspect a ship he was hoping to buy and was on his way back to South Africa when he was arrested. -- Nigeria charged Okah with treason and gun-running in March 2008.

-- He faced the death penalty if convicted. The MEND was behind a wave of attacks on the Nigerian oil industry in early 2006 that forced the closure of a fifth of oil output from Africa's biggest producer, contributing to a surge in oil prices on international markets. -- In May 2009 prosecutors reduced the charges against Okah to three counts -- treason, treasonable felony and conspiracy -- from 62 but no plea at the court in Jos was taken.

-- The government withdrew its case on Monday and Okah was released.

* SOME LIFE DETAILS:

-- A child of a Navy officer, he lived among the wealthy elite of early post-independence Nigeria. In a interview for the BBC, his brother Charles Okah said he remembered a very "British" upbringing.

-- Charles said the brothers went to private schools, and had never visited their family village in Bayelsa state, where the oil industry was then developing.

-- The execution of Delta activist Ken Saro Wiwa by Nigeria's military government in 1995 affected Henry very badly, his brother said.

The government said Okah was an international arms dealer who used guns to get control of a group of criminals, and exploited the situation for his own ends. -- From 2003, Okah lived in South Africa with his wife and four children, according to the BBC. He is in his early forties.

Sources Reuters/BBC

(For main story click on [ID:nLD71322]

(Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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