“It’s outrageous,” counsel for the plaintiffs Anders Sjögren told OCCRP outside the courtroom. “The victims have the right to be compensated for all their suffering due to this oil company.”
Former chairman and CEO Ian Lundin and Alexandre Schneiter are accused of abetting war crimes during a violent campaign 20 to 25 years ago by the Sudanese government forces and allied militias.
The indictment states that they killed thousands of civilians and displaced many more as entire villages were emptied to pave way for Lundin Oil’s exploration in an area called Block 5A. It is now in South Sudan but was part of Sudan before that country split in 2011.
The accused deny the charges, as does the company, now known as Orrön Energy. Lundin and Schneiter face long prison sentences if convicted.
The lives of the defendants and the victims could hardly be more contrasting. The case pits the oil company’s former top executives against 32 South Sudanese plaintiffs from the Nuer community of herders and farmers in one of the world’s poorest countries. The trial in the Stockholm District Court began in September last year and is scheduled to go on for a record-long two and a half years.
In May, the court began hearing the victims’ accounts of events, of bombings and helicopter attacks, of loved ones lost, villages razed and livestock stolen. The plaintiffs are taking the stand until November.
But the courts have already quashed the victims’ hopes for damages, two of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, former Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström and his associate Anders Sjögren, argued in a newspaper op-ed.
The reason is that the District Court decided to only focus on the criminal charges in the ongoing case and refer compensation claims, if the accused are convicted, to a separate, civil lawsuit.
This has severe consequences for the victims, Bodström and Sjögren, who represent 15 of the 32 plaintiffs, point out.
In all previous Swedish war crimes cases, criminal charges and damages were handled in the same trial, an associate law professor, Fanny Holm, has noted.
When the damages are handled separately, however, foreign plaintiffs can be demanded to deposit a security for trial costs should they lose. In this case, such a separate lawsuit is also expected to be complex and lengthy. Therefore, the defence has argued before the court that the deposited amount should be set to 500,000 Swedish crowns (43,914 euros/US$47,764) per plaintiff. While no precise amount has been decided by the court, the figure gives an idea of the money involved.
“That amount is way more than any of the plaintiffs will make during their lifetime,” Bodström and Sjögren wrote in their article.
One of the plaintiffs, reverend Matthew Mattiang Deang, told OCCRP about the enormous damage the war did to his community. “The reason we came here is that the company did this damage to us and that damage, even our culture, must be compensated,” Deang said after testifying.
When asked about depositing up to 45,000 euros per plaintiff, Deang shook his head. “We cannot do it. We don’t have that money.”
Sjögren added his clients could not even set aside 1,000 euros ($1,087).
The separation of trials also makes the victims’ wait for possible compensation even longer.
When asked why the court did not take into consideration the plaintiffs’ financial situation, Chief Judge Tomas Zander wrote in an email to OCCRP that he thought it inappropriate to comment on an ongoing case and referred to the court decision. But he stressed that “the District Court did not order the plaintiffs to provide a security of almost 500,000 crown each to have their claims examined.”
In its decision, the court wrote that trials can be separated to avoid “significant inconveniences,” in this case substantial delays. The plaintiffs in sum ask for around 10 million euros ($10.87 million) in compensation. The court considers their claims vague and related to numerous events.
Also, the defendants would need a lot of time to prepare their case. All in all, the court estimates that the trial would be delayed one full year further, which could violate the rights of the defendants. The court admits inconveniences for the plaintiffs but claims that they are not denied compensation because of this, and that their counsels could have worked faster before the trial to avoid delay. The counsels refute that.
The plaintiffs appealed the decision, but the Svea Court of Appeals upheld it without motivation and did not wish to comment.
Bodström and Sjögren wrote in their article that the plaintiffs’ “motivation to participate in a trial where the court has failed them so deeply has obviously plummeted.”
“You do not have to be a lawyer to realise that the district court’s decision also may have affected the outcome of the entire case, since the victims’ story is an important part of the indictment,” they added.
Chief Prosecutor Henrik Attorps also warned the court of the risk of effectively quashing the victims’ possibility for compensation, but told OCCRP he did not want to comment further on the issue or how it affects the strength of the evidence.
OCCRP asked Sjögren if he considered the trial fair, given these circumstances.
“It has started uphill, in terms of a free trial. But the last word hasn’t been said and we’re waiting for a lot of evidence to be presented, so we’ll have to see.”
