French energy giant TotalEnergies was formally accused Monday of complicity in war crimes and torture in a criminal complaint filed in Paris over a massacre at its Mozambique gas plant, first uncovered by a POLITICO investigation last year.

The complaint, filed by the legal nonprofit the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), alleges that TotalEnergies became an accomplice in the “so-called ‘container massacre’” because it “directly financed and materially supported” Mozambican soldiers protecting its compound from an ISIS-linked insurgency.

As POLITICO revealed, the soldiers, based inside TotalEnergies’ concession just south of the Tanzanian border, brutalized, starved, suffocated, executed or disappeared around 200 men in its gatehouse from June to September 2021.

“TotalEnergies knew that the Mozambican armed forces had been accused of systematic human rights violations, yet continued to support them with the only objective to secure its own facility,” said Clara Gonzales, co-director of the business and human rights program at ECCHR, a Berlin-based group of lawyers specializing in international law. 

In response to questions by POLITICO last year, TotalEnergies — through its subsidiary Mozambique LNG — said it had no knowledge of the container killings, adding that its “extensive research” had “not identified any information nor evidence that would corroborate the allegations of severe abuses and torture.”

Asked about the gatehouse killings in the French National Assembly in May, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné dismissed “these false allegations” and demanded the company’s accusers “put their evidence on the table.”

The 56-page complaint, which also alleges complicity in enforced disappearances, was filed at the offices of the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor, whose remit includes war crimes. The prosecutor will decide whether to open a formal inquiry and appoint an investigating magistrate. If the case proceeds to trial, potential penalties range from five years to life in prison.

The complaint was filed under a legal principle known as “universal jurisdiction,” which allows a country to prosecute crimes committed outside its territory. Forged in Nuremberg and Tokyo in the wake of World War II, the principle has been used more recently by national and international courts to bring warlords and dictators to trial — and by national courts to prosecute citizens or companies implicated in abuses abroad where local justice systems are weak.

The ECCHR has previously filed a criminal complaint against French cement maker Lafarge, over its Syrian operation, accusing it of paying protection money to ISIS. After a French state prosecutor took up the case, the company and eight former executives went on trial this month in Paris, accused of funding terrorism, a charge they deny. A US court has already fined the company $777.8 million for funding terrorism through its Syria operation.

The ECCHR’s Gonzales called on the French state judiciary to pick up TotalEnergies’ case, too. “Companies and their executives are not neutral actors when they operate in conflict zones,” she said. “If they enable or fuel crimes, they might be complicit and should be held accountable.”

POLITICO first revealed in September 2024 how Mozambican commandos based at TotalEnergies’ gas plant — part of the largest private investment ever made in Africa — rounded up about 500 villagers and accused them of supporting local insurgents.

The soldiers separated men from women and children, raped several of the women, then crammed 180 to 250 men into the two metal windowless shipping containers that formed a rudimentary fortified entrance to TotalEnergies’ plant.

According to 11 survivors and two witnesses, the men were imprisoned for three months in 30-degree-Celsius heat. Some suffocated. Others starved or died of thirst after being fed only handfuls of rice and bottle caps of water. The soldiers beat and tortured many of the rest. Finally, they began taking them away in groups and executing them.

Only 26 men survived, saved when a Rwandan intervention force, deployed to fight ISIS, discovered the operation. A house-to-house survey conducted by POLITICO later identified by name 97 of those killed or disappeared.

The ECCHR filing is the second legal action to hit TotalEnergies’ Mozambican operation this year. In March, the French state prosecutor announced a formal criminal investigation into the company into allegations of involuntary manslaughter and failure to assist persons in danger over the deaths of 55 of its construction contractors in a March 2021 attack by ISIS in the nearby town of Palma. 

TotalEnergies, which has claimed it lost none of its workforce during the attack, denies the accusations. After suspending plant construction after the assault, the company moved to restart operations last month and hopes to start pumping gas by 2029.

Pouyanné revealed last month that his company has incurred an extra $4.5 billion in costs since 2021, a sum he wants the Mozambican government to reimburse. The project also depends on $14.9 billion in loans, some of which are uncertain.

The British state lender UK Export Finance, which pledged $1.1 billion, has yet to release the funds after it opened an investigation into the container killings this year. The Dutch government, which promised $1.2 billion in guarantees, is conducting its own inquiry. Meanwhile, U.S. environmentalists have taken the U.S. Export-Import Bank to court over its $4.7 billion loan.

Lorette Philippot, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth France, which is supporting ECCHR’s legal action, said the “seriousness of the allegations against TotalEnergies … must set a red line for the financial backers of Mozambique LNG. They did not sign blank cheques.”

The evidence in ECCHR’s complaint includes photographs of the containers and internal TotalEnergies documents, seen by POLITICO, obtained under Italian and Dutch Freedom of Information requests.

These show the company knew its Mozambican guards routinely committed human rights abuses, including killings, and it was aware of a rise in incidents in the months after the Palma attack. TotalEnergies’ security reports mention multiple abuses by soldiers stationed at its gas plant, known as the Joint Task Force, between June and September 2021. After one incident in August 2021, which is not described in detail, TotalEnergies docked the pay of all 1,000 soldiers on its site, and the Mozambican army ejected 200 soldiers from the facility.

“Despite this knowledge,” wrote the ECCHR, “TotalEnergies continued to directly support the Joint Task Force by providing accommodation, food, equipment and soldier bonuses — while stipulating that bonuses would be withdrawn if soldiers committed human rights violations.”