“TotalEnergies knew that the Mozambican armed forces had been accused of systematic human rights violations, yet continued to support them with the only objective to secure its own facility,” said Clara Gonzales, co-director of the business and human rights program at ECCHR, a Berlin-based group of lawyers specializing in international law.
In response to questions by POLITICO last year, TotalEnergies — through its subsidiary Mozambique LNG — said it had no knowledge of the container killings, adding that its “extensive research” had “not identified any information nor evidence that would corroborate the allegations of severe abuses and torture.”
Asked about the gatehouse killings in the French National Assembly in May, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné dismissed “these false allegations” and demanded the company’s accusers “put their evidence on the table.”
The 56-page complaint, which also alleges complicity in enforced disappearances, was filed at the offices of the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor, whose remit includes war crimes. The prosecutor will decide whether to open a formal inquiry and appoint an investigating magistrate. If the case proceeds to trial, potential penalties range from five years to life in prison.
ECCHR filed the complaint in France, despite the alleged crimes occurring in Mozambique, because, it argues, TotalEnergies’ nationality establishes jurisdiction. The case represents a dramatic example of the extension of international justice — the prosecution in one country of crimes committed in another.
A movement forged in Nuremberg and Tokyo in the wake of World War II, the principles of international justice have been used more recently by national and international courts to bring warlords and dictators to trial — and by national courts to prosecute citizens or companies implicated in abuses abroad where local justice systems are weak.