Source: AFP
French prosecutors said Saturday they are investigating oil giant TotalEnergies for possible involuntary manslaughter in connection with a 2021 jihadist attack in Mozambique that killed hundreds.
The investigation follows a legal complaint by the victims’ families and survivors of the attack, accusing the French energy company, which developed a major liquefied gas project in the area, of failing to protect its subcontractors, the prosecutor’s office told AFP.
Survivors and families say TotalEnergies also failed to provide fuel so helicopters could evacuate civilians after Islamic State-linked militants killed dozens of people in the Mozambican city of Palma on March 24, 2021.
The entire offensive in the province of Cabo Delgado lasted several days, claiming many hundreds of lives. Some of the victims were beheaded and thousands fled their homes.
Contacted by AFP on Saturday, a spokesman for TotalEnergies repeated an earlier statement saying it “categorically rejects the allegations”.
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He said the company’s teams in Mozambique provided emergency assistance and made it possible to evacuate 2,500 people from the plant, including civilians, staff, contractors and subcontractors.
The French investigation also seeks to determine whether TotalEnergies is guilty of failing to help people in danger, prosecutors said.
Seven British and South African whistleblowers — three survivors and four victims’ relatives — accuse TotalEnergies of failing to take steps to ensure the safety of subcontractors even before the attack.
The Al-Shabab group — unrelated to the Somali group of the same name — which carried out the attack has been active in Cabo Delgado province since 2017 and is moving closer to Palma.
“The risk was known,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Henri Thulliez said in 2023 at the time of the lawsuit.
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Depending on the outcome of the preliminary investigation, the case will either be dismissed or the investigation intensified with a view to possible charges, they said.
“Positive Step”
Families and survivors welcomed the French decision, with Nicholas Alexander, a South African survivor of the attack, calling it a “positive step”.
TotalEnergies, he said, bore a “share of responsibility” for the tragedy, he told AFP.
Anabela Lemos, an activist with Friends of the Earth Mozambique — known locally as Justica Ambiental — said the “negative impact” of the French oil major’s operations in Mozambique went beyond the 2021 attack because of the environmental “catastrophe” and the ” deaths” as a result of his presence there.
TotalEnergies’ $20 billion project to develop a large natural gas field on the Afungi peninsula was halted after the 2021 attack, but chairman Patrick Pouyanne has since said he hoped to revive it.
In November 2023, a group of 124 NGOs published an open letter to dozens of financial institutions, including European, Japanese and South African banks, calling on them to withdraw from the project.
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The NGOs — which included the Union for Human Rights, Oil Change International and Greenpeace France — told the 28 financial institutions that they would otherwise bear “direct and significant responsibility” for its impact.
“The humanitarian and security risks, as well as the complexity of operations in a conflict zone” were underestimated, the NGOs said in the letter, calling any continuation “reckless”.
The project threatened local ecosystems and the global climate while failing to benefit local communities, they said.
Mozambique has high hopes for huge natural gas fields — the largest found south of the Sahara — discovered in the Muslim-majority northern province in 2010.
The former Portuguese colony of 30 million people in southeast Africa is one of the world’s poorest countries despite having large natural resources, especially natural gas.
It has faced insurgencies from Islamist groups for much of the past decade.
Source: AFP