The former CEO and the former chairman of a Swedish oil firm went on trial in Sweden on Tuesday, accused of complicity in war crimes in Sudan between 1999 and 2003—charges that they both flatly deny.
Prosecutors say that the former Lundin Oil—which has changed its name several times and in 2022 sold most of its business—asked Khartoum to secure a potential oilfield in what is now South Sudan, knowing that this would mean seizing the area by force.
This made the executives complicit in war crimes that were then carried out by the Sudanese army and allied militia against civilians, according to the 2021 indictment.
"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," the prosecution agency said in 2021.
Sudan waged war for decades in South Sudan, which became independent in 2011, and elsewhere in the country. Former president Omar al-Bashir, who ruled between 1989 and 2019, is wanted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague for genocide and other war crimes, which he denies.
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