France launches involuntary homicide investigation against the oil giant on Mozambique’s attack

French prosecutors said on Saturday that they had opened an involuntary homicide investigation against the total energy giant after a bloody jihadist attack of 2021 in Mozambique.

In October 2023, the survivors and relatives of the victims of the attack near an important gas field in northern Mozambique launched legal actions against the oil and gas giant, accusing it of not protecting their subcontractors.

Militants linked to the Islamic State killed dozens of people when they attacked the port city of Palma in March 2021, sending thousands of people who fled to the surrounding forest.

The attack in the province of Cabo Delgado lasted several days. Some of the victims were beheaded.

On Friday, investigation into involuntary homicide was launched and the lack of help to people in danger, he told the AFP of the prosecutor’s office in Nanterre, west of Paris.

TotalEnergies stopped its LNG project of $ 20 billion after the attack, but hopes to restart it.

There was no immediate reaction of total energy.

In a statement published at the time when the complaint was filed in 2023, the company “strongly rejected these accusations.”

Seven British and South African plaintiffs, three survivors and four relatives of the victims, accuse Totalgies, which was known as total in 2021, of not taking measures to guarantee the safety of subcontractors before the assault.

The criminal complaint filed in 2023 accuses Totalgies, who was developing a liquefied natural gas project in Afungi, near Palma, of involuntary homicide and not attending people in danger.

The Mozambique government said that around 30 people were killed, but Alex Perry, an independent journalist who carried out a five -month investigation into the massacre, told 1,402 people dead or missing, including 55 total contractors.

The Al-Shabab Group (without link to the Somali group of the same name) that carried out the attack had been active in the province of Cabo Delgado since 2017.

Total is also accused of refusing to provide fuel to a South African security company that organized helicopter rescues from a roasted hotel during the attack.

The company finally ran out of fuel, leaving people stranded inside.

‘Climate Pump’

Janik Armstrong, a Canadian whose husband Adrian Nel was killed in the siege, told journalists in 2023 how he resisted the siege for two days in Amarula Lodge, with another 150 “waiting for a rescue for total or the Mozambícan security forces that never arrived.”

She said that when they realized that “they had been abandoned,” they tried to explode in a car convoy, but were criticized by the gunmen, who killed her husband.

TotalEnergies has said that “all Mozambique Lng’s staff and its contractors and subcontractors had been evacuated,” mainly by boat.

The company also insisted that it had supplied fuel for the rescue operation.

The attack triggered the deployment of forces from the countries of Rwanda and Southern Africa that since then have helped Mozambique to resume control of much of Cabo Delgado.

TotalEnergies hopes to restart the delayed project, and this week the US export bank approved a loan of $ 4.7 billion for the company.

TotalEnergies has a 26.5 percent participation in the project, whose objective is to export gas mainly to clients in Asia.

Several NGOs issued a joint statement on Friday by calling other European and Asian financial “to refuse to follow this toxic and irresponsible leadership and oppose the restart of the project, a climate bomb associated with numerous accusations of human rights violations.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a union feed).