FREELAND — At times, it was like one big joke.

Joel Bisina isn’t laughing now, though. The Langley resident, who was held captive for nearly a week by the Nigerian military during a visit last month to the Niger Delta with a Seattle film crew, said Monday he has filed a lawsuit against the African nation for his unlawful arrest.

Bisina shared details of his harrowing experience in the hands of the military, a story that grabbed national headlines when it unfolded in early April.

He recalled how he started his journey home to the Niger Delta with his friend and filmmaker Sandy Cioffi and her crew. They had chartered a speed boat to spend time with Bisina’s mother in her village for a visit and some interviews for Cioffi’s documentary film, “Sweet Crude.”

The movie examines the impact of the oil industry in the resource-rich delta, a region that sits at the epicenter of the country’s oil revenue where families once simply fished for their sustenance.

In the Niger Delta, the only way to travel home is by boat. On April 12, Joel Bisina and the filmmakers began their journey to the village. It was a familiar place for Cioffi, as well, who had made three previous visits to the area.

But on this day, at the very first military checkpoint at Oghara Junction, soldiers stopped Bisina and his friends.

A soldier demanded that Bisina identify himself.

“I told him I am a consultant and work on peace and conflict issues and community development,” Bisina said.

“He asked me which hospital I worked at. For a person to be a consultant, you must be working in a hospital. I told him I don’t work for a hospital.”

The situation grew more tense. The soldier then asked for Bisina’s security permit to transport foreigners within the delta.

“I said that I am not aware that I need a security permit from the military to go to my village,” he said. “He said ‘If you don’t have a security permit, you can’t go on the waterways.’”

Bisina demanded to see the senior military official, thinking it would help.

“Sometimes when you get into situations, if you talk to a more senior official, he will understand and be able to handle the situation,” Bisina said.

Instead, the official wanted to know who was rude to his soldier. Bisina bristled.

“Your soldier demanded of me a security pass to go to my village and I am not aware of any law in this country that requires I need permission from the military to go to my village,” he told the official.

Then, after soldiers studied the film crew’s travel visas, a senior official asked Bisina for his passport.

“I told them I didn’t have my passport. I’m a Nigerian so I don’t need to be carrying it to move around,” he said.

“I asked the guy jokingly ‘Do you have a passport?’ He said no.”

Eventually, a more senior military official arrived and interrogated Bisina. Soon, it became clear the soldiers thought Bisina had kidnapped the film crew.

“I said, ‘If that’s the case, where am I going to take them? They are four people and I am just one,” he recalled.

“I told him he should have asked me if they were kidnapping me. I was taking it so lightly,” he added.

Things quickly changed when a soldier looked inside the film crew’s bags and discovered the cameras. A military official in Waari then ordered the soldiers to bring them to the military headquarters in Waari.

A member of the film crew, however, started sending messages home of what was happening.

“It was on our way back to Waari to the military headquarters that Tammi Sims started texting and getting the word out,” Bisina said.

After they arrived at Waari, the questioning continued but it became obvious that they were going to be taken to Abuja, even though the group had told the soldiers they were meeting with people who’d invited them to come for interviews.

“An official asked about the invitation letters. So I called my wife, Mary Ella, to e-mail them to my brother Tunke who printed them out and brought them to the Joint Task Force military headquarters,” he said.

At that point, though, the official papers were worthless.

“When he got there, they had already concluded they were taking us to Abuja. They ordered him (Tunke) out at gunpoint.”

The soldiers took their cell phones and gave the group five minutes at their hotel to gather a few belongings. Bisina asked for his things to be brought as well, including his diabetes medications. He never got them.

“They took our photographs as if we were criminals. They put us on videotape to state our names and nationalities as if we were criminals,” he said.

The situation seemed surreal.

“For me, even at this point, I am wondering what is going on here. This was not our first time in the delta. We built a library. We’ve been working on this documentary.

“So it was like a joke. It was never — ‘You guys are under arrest.’”

As darkness fell, they piled into trucks filled with lots of armed soldiers for an eight- to nine-hour trek toward Abuja at high speeds on dangerous roads. They were going so fast that twice, they nearly collided with police checkpoints, Bisina said.

“We got there and were handed over to the troops, who took possession of our personal belongings and everything we had. They marched us into a room,” he said.

After eating some bread and boiled eggs, their first meal since being arrested, Bisina and the others were interrogated one at a time. There would be no more food, water or medicine for many hours.

Not only was Bisina suffering from his diabetes at this point, his allergies were being triggered by the stuffy and dusty room where he and two other men in the group were being held.

“My health went straight down,” he said.

Back in the United States, many friends and relatives of the captives began working for their release. Officials in Washington, D.C. began talks with Nigerian officials.

Still, it wasn’t until the U.S. State Department stepped in that Bisina received medical care on a late Monday afternoon, three days after the group was taken into custody. It was not until Tuesday before he was given his medicine.

The interrogations continued unabated until Wednesday, April 16.

“They’d call me out, ask some questions and take me back,” he said.

“The whole idea was to set me against the Americans. ‘Who are these crazy American spies? Do you know what they are here for? Why are you working with them?’” he recalled.

The soldiers continued to question Cioffi and her crew, but offered no explanations.

“Nobody told us why we were arrested,” he said. “Nobody told us if we’d committed a crime. It was just interrogation and taking us back to the room.”

While Bisina admits that the experience itself was not a good one, it helped draw attention to the Niger Delta.

“For me, I never regretted that I was arrested even though the experience was not a pleasant one,” he said. “The good side of it was that it has worked to further the issues to the international arena. The Niger Delta is where the oil is coming from.”

“Stability in the region is very strategic to global energy issues,” he added. “If we wait until there is a full-blown war in the region, it would affect the entire globe.”

Since his release from the authorities in Abuja, Bisina has filed suit with the Nigerian Federal government claiming that his arrest was unconstitutional and illegal.

In the suit, Bisina has asked for 15 million naira in damages, which includes 5 million naira in damages for the unlawful arrest and 10 million naira in damages for the unlawful and unconstitutional torture and detention. The amount is roughly equal to $127,000.

Bisina will return to Nigeria in the next week or so.

But before he goes, Bisina will speak to South End residents about his experiences in Nigeria at 7 p.m. Sunday, June 1 at Langley United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall.

The event will include a short cut of the “Sweet Crude” documentary, a discussion about the recent events in the delta and a dialogue between Bisina and Giraffe Heroes Project president John Graham, who was previously a U.S. diplomat for African Affairs during the Carter administration.