Nov 11, 2021 — Latest reports from Stockholm, Sweden, announce that at least two representatives of the Lundin Oil AB have been indicted today by the Swedish prosecutors for complicity in grave war crimes in Sudan between 1999 and 2003.
According to the Swedish prosecutors, who have been following the case since 2010, Lundin Oil AB was involved in committing war crimes in Unity State, specifically in Block 5A from 1999 to 2003 and two representatives are being indicted; one for complicity for the period between May 1999 to March 2003, and the other for the period between October 2000 to March 2003.
In connection with the indictment, the prosecutors demand to confiscate an amount of 1 391 791 000 SEK from Lundin Oil AB, which is equivalent to roughly 160 million USD.
According to the prosecutors, an investigation which has delayed the case for all these years has revealed that the military and its allied militia systematically attacked civilians or carried out indiscriminate attacks in an attempt to displace them from the oil fields and their outskirts, turning the villages into war zones.
”In our view, the investigation shows that the military and its allied militia systematically attacked civilians or carried out indiscriminate attacks. For example, aerial bombardments from transport planes, shooting civilians from helicopter gunships, abducting and plundering civilians and burning entire villages and their crops so that people did not have anything to live by. Consequently, many civilians were killed, injured and displaced from Block 5A”, says Head of the Investigation, Public Prosecutor Henrik Attorps.
The prosecutors further argue that the military went into Block 5A in May 1999, in breach of the local peace agreement, Lundin Oil changed its view of who should be responsible for the security around the company’s operations
”Directly after the military went into Block 5A in May 1999, in breach of the local peace agreement, Lundin Oil changed its view of who should be responsible for the security around the company’s operations” says Chief Public Prosecutor Krister Petersson.
“The company then requested from the Sudanese government that the military should now be made responsible for the security, knowing that this meant that the military would then need to take control of Block 5A via military force. What constitutes complicity in a criminal sense is that they made these demands despite understanding or, in any case being indifferent to the military and the militia carrying out the war in a way that was forbidden according to international humanitarian law”, Krister continued.
