The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) said on Tuesday it had filed a criminal complaint in France against TotalEnergies for complicity in war crimes, torture, and enforced disappearance at the Mozambique LNG site in 2021.
According to the NGO’s complaint, the French supermajor “is accused of having directly financed and materially supported the Joint Task Force, composed of Mozambican armed forces, which between July and September 2021, allegedly detained, tortured and killed dozens of civilians on TotalEnergies’ gas site.”
The European NGO has filed the complaint with the French National Anti Terrorism Prosecutor (PNAT), which also has a mandate to investigate international crimes.
The ECCHR claims that TotalEnergies knew of human rights violations committed by armed forces before the massacre.
The complaint is being filed just as TotalEnergies lifted the four-year-long force majeure on the Mozambique LNG project, which was stalled due to the precarious security situation near the site of the planned $20-billion export facility.
TotalEnergies has been accused several times of being complicit in violence at the site or near it, but the French group has rejected it had any knowledge of such incidents.
Following a Politico article last year, which is the basis for the new complaint by the ECCHR, TotalEnergies published the response of Mozambique LNG regarding the alleged violence.
“Mozambique LNG would like to clearly state that it has no knowledge of the alleged events described in your “Story Summary” and has never received any information indicating that such events took place,” the company operating the project said in September 2024 in response to the article.
TotalEnergies and its partners appear to be close to restarting the development of the project in Mozambique, which hinges on Mozambican government approval and an updated budget and schedule. The goal to achieve first LNG production has slipped, first to 2027, and later, to 2029.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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