The prosecutor’s voice is steady when he delivers the final demand. After almost three years of proceedings and over 300 days in court, the Swedish prosecution asks the Stockholm District Court to sentence Ian Lundin and Alexandre Schneiter to respectively ten and six years’ imprisonment for complicity in gross violations of international law.
Courtroom number 34 has rarely been this full. Colleagues from several Swedish and foreign media outlets, prosecutors, observers, and plaintiffs fill the main room. On screens, the two defendants follow the proceedings remotely from Geneva — as they have done for much of the trial.
In the trial that started in September 2023, the two directors of Swedish oil company Lundin Oil are charged with complicity in war crimes committed in Sudan between 1997 and 2003.
This is the end point.
A trial about oil, war and responsibility
But to understand how the prosecution arrived here, one must move backward through six days of closing arguments, and, in many ways, go back through decades of war, oil exploration, and contested narratives about responsibility.
From the outset, chief prosecutor Henrik Attorps framed the case not merely as a criminal trial, but as a historical reckoning. He described Sudan’s second civil war as “one of the world’s most forgotten conflicts,” noting that while atrocities in Darfur led to international prosecutions, the violence in southern Sudan had largely escaped judicial scrutiny, until now.
This trial, he argued, fills that gap.
But it also does something more unusual: it places economic motives, specifically oil, at the centre of a war crimes case. According to the prosecution, Lundin Oil’s operations in Sudan were not merely conducted in a conflict zone. They were intertwined with it.
At one point, Attorps pauses: “This is not only a war crimes trial”, he says. “It is also a trial in which a Swedish court is examining the economic drivers behind the alleged crimes and the role oil played in the civil war between the Sudanese government and the SPLA [rebellion].”
Attorps moves across the wider landscape: oil, Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, and the conflict itself. But gradually, the focus narrows. At its core, he says, the case is about a Swedish company seeking to profit from oil.
“In itself, that is not controversial,” he adds.
What followed, however, required cooperation with what much of the world regarded as a brutal regime. “For Lundin, this was not a problem,” Attorps tells the court. “The company operated in an environment of maximum insecurity — and that was seen as an advantage, because it kept competitors away.”
The profits from Block 5A, he argues, became a kind of springboard, laying the foundation for what is today the successful company Orron Energy.
Corporate responsibility and mass crimes
Then he broadens the lens again.
Courts routinely examine economic motives in other types of crime, he notes. Yet when it comes to the gravest offences — genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes — such analysis is far less common.
“That is striking,” he says, given how central natural resources like oil, gold and minerals have been in fuelling conflicts. Control over these resources can determine the outcome of a war — and secure or sustain political power, largely through the revenues they generate.
To make the point, Attorps turns to history.
The question of corporate responsibility, he reminds the court, was already present during the Nuremberg trials, where industrial leaders were convicted for cooperating with the Nazi regime, whether by producing gas or exploiting forced labour.
More recently, he notes, similar issues have surfaced in cases in France involving corporate ties to Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
And in the Netherlands, a businessman was sentenced in 2007 for complicity in war crimes after his company supplied chemicals to Iraqi Saddam Hussein’s regime, chemicals that were later used in the production of weapons deployed against Kurdish civilians.
Attorps lingers on that Dutch case. In its judgment, the Court of Appeal in The Hague wrote that the accused had contributed to crimes at a time when many - if not all - other companies had withdrawn under international pressure. It also found that they acted solely in pursuit of profit, without regard for the victims.
According to Attorps, those words could just as well apply here in Lundin’s case.
The “bigger picture” before the details
The first days of the closing arguments were devoted to building what Attorps repeatedly called “the whole picture.”
Report after report was presented, moving from United Nations investigations to human rights documentation, from NGO reports to journalistic accounts, and further into the company’s own internal records. Taken together, prosecutors argued, these different strands of material converged into a single, consistent narrative — one marked by attacks on civilians, forced displacement, and military operations closely linked to oil activities.
The defence had dismissed such material as unreliable — a “whispering game” in which sources simply echoed one another. The prosecution countered that, on the contrary, the consistency across independent actors strengthened the credibility of the evidence.
Attorps pauses and looks up from his notes. He urges the court to take a step back. To see the whole. “It is important not to miss the forest for the trees,” he says, emphasizing that each individual piece of evidence must be understood in its broader context — and that what is being alleged only becomes clear when viewed as part of a larger pattern.
Attorps then turns to one of the defence’s central arguments: that the events in question are too old, too complex, to be meaningfully assessed today. “Yes, it is complex,” he concedes. But he points to previous proceedings related to Rwanda and Iran, where courts were faced with similar defence claims, that the entire case was based on conspiracy or fabrication. The implication is clear: complexity does not preclude accountability.
Returning to the core of the case, the prosecutor insists that the actions of the defendants must be assessed within the framework of a joint project — the extraction of oil in Block 5A. “We cannot equate the position of the company with that of civilians,” he adds. “The company aligned itself with the Sudanese regime. The civilians did not.”
Attorps also cautions against drawing conclusions from isolated observations, particularly those made in later years. What was seen in 2001, he argues, says little about the situation in 1999 or 2000. Landscapes change. Vegetation grows back. Absence of visible destruction at one moment does not disprove what occurred earlier.
To underline the point, he turns to a contemporary comparison: if journalists were to visit eastern Ukraine today in the company of Russian forces, he asks, what would civilians feel able to say?
The question hangs in the room.
With that, he brings his introduction to a close – and turns, finally, to the evidence.
Witnesses: memory, trauma, and credibility
A central part of the closing arguments focused on the testimonies of 34 plaintiffs, 32 of whom testified in court, civilians from southern Sudan who described attacks, displacement, and loss. Prosecutors grouped their accounts geographically, mapping them onto different areas of Block 5A. The aim was clear: to transform individual stories into a collective pattern of violence.
Prosecutors acknowledged inconsistencies - particularly regarding dates - but argued that such discrepancies are expected in testimonies about traumatic events that occurred decades ago. People may forget exact timelines, but retain vivid memories of the events themselves, especially when those events are extreme.
But when it comes to credibility, the prosecutors are firm. There is no financial incentive, they argue, behind the plaintiffs’ participation or the substance of their testimonies. The prospects of compensation have been non-existent. And yet, they say, it has been striking how many have chosen to take part in what has been a long and demanding process.
Several, they note, have even expressed a sense of gratitude toward Sweden. The group itself, prosecutors emphasize, is made up of ordinary civilians.
“What they share,” one prosecutor explains, “is that their everyday lives were shattered by conflict — and that they were subjected to aerial attacks.” Their accounts are marked by small, often unexpected details — fragments that may seem incidental, even peculiar, but which, taken together, give the impression of lived experience.
In the prosecution’s view, there is simply no motive for this group to describe attacks that never occurred.
A turning point: May 1999
The prosecutors return repeatedly to one pivotal sequence of events.
It begins with the attack on the oil rig at Thar Yath in early 1999, an incident they describe as a turning point. According to the internal reporting presented in court, the attack is understood within the company as retaliation, part of a broader escalation triggered by the military’s entry into Block 5A.
At the heart of that escalation, prosecutors argue, lies oil.
A key internal security assessment after the attack states that “the find of oil may have been the deciding factor” behind the military deployment. “It is inconceivable,” Attorps tells the court, “that Ian Lundin was not aware of this.”
In the prosecution’s narrative, the attack on the rig crystallizes something that had already been set in motion: the growing alignment between the company’s operational needs and the regime’s military strategy.
In the aftermath of the attack, the company formulates a demand, that the Sudanese military must secure a 50-kilometre radius around its operations. On a map, prosecutors note, this amounts to a vast area covering much of Block 5A.
This is not, they argue, a request for passive protection.
“This is something else entirely,” Attorps says. To establish control over such a territory would inevitably require offensive military operations. And, as the evidence presented throughout the trial suggests, those operations repeatedly targeted civilians.
Yet the demand stands. According to the prosecution, it is approved at the highest level, by Ian Lundin himself. And once the demand is made, the logic unfolds. The military moves in. Fighting intensifies. Villages identified in the proceedings - Leer, Koch, Nhialdiu - become sites of repeated displacement, frequently cited in UN reporting as places from which civilians flee. At the same time, humanitarian access is restricted, with flight bans preventing aid organizations from reaching some of the worst-affected areas.
And still, the company maintains its position. Despite the military’s difficulties in securing the territory, prosecutors argue, the expectation of continued operations and continued fighting, is built into the project itself.
This, ultimately, is where the prosecution locates criminal responsibility. Not in a single decision, but in a chain of choices that begins with the attack on the rig, takes form in the 50-kilometre security demand, and unfolds in the violence that follows.
The road, the army, and the logic of control
Another key sequence in the prosecution’s case concerns the road. It is, according to prosecution, a continuation of the same logic that followed the attack on the rig.
In the security annex to the road agreement, responsibility for protection is placed squarely with the Sudanese military. The plan itself is developed in cooperation with the state oil authority, OEPA. At the same time, the same document makes clear that the road would pass through Jikany, an area still outside military control and described as “the most vulnerable” from a security standpoint.
The implication, prosecutors argue, is unavoidable: to build the road, the area first had to be secured. That point was reinforced by the testimony from Carl Bildt, who told the court that roads cannot be constructed in territory the military does not control. Control must come first.
“When Ian Lundin signs,” prosecutor Karolina Wieslander argues, “the crime is completed.” By committing the company to finance and build the road, in agreement with the Sudanese state, he aligns the project with the military effort required to make it possible.
Yet the military never fully succeeds in securing the area. Internal reports show repeated attempts to establish control, each accompanied by fighting.
Despite this, the project continues.
By this stage, Wieslander notes, warnings were already in circulation. Swedish television had reported on alleged links between oil operations and violence. International reports had raised similar concerns. Consultants had been brought in to assess the criticism.
“Despite all this,” Wieslander says, “the company proceeds, building a road through an area it knows is not under control.” In the prosecution’s telling, the road is the physical expression of a strategy, one that depends on military force to clear the way.
Knowledge and intent
According to the prosecution, staff largely confined themselves to the areas where operations were taking place: the base, the road, the drilling sites. Beyond that, there was little visibility. Witnesses testified that they had no real knowledge of what was happening in surrounding areas, and no systematic effort was made to find out.
“When we asked [Richard] Ramsey whether it was a problem not to know what had happened,” Attorps tells the court, “he replied that the fighting was over — that it had been ‘bush fighting.’” It suggests, he argues, not just a lack of information, but a lack of interest in understanding what had taken place once operations could resume.
The focus then shifts to a series of military offensives in 2001.
These operations, prosecutors argue, were aimed at neutralizing the militia leader Peter Gadet, described in internal reporting as the primary threat to the company’s activities in the block. A security report from that year notes that “large forces are believed to be deployed to ensure that Block 5A is secure.” From January onwards, the attacks intensify. Government troops, allied militias and other armed groups take part.
In monthly reports sent to partners, Alexandre Schneiter repeatedly identifies Gadet as the central obstacle to operations. The language in the reports is technical, almost clinical.
During his testimony, Ramsey himself framed it in practical terms. “Gadet was a constant threat from the west,” he said. “We needed forces there. Attacks against Gadet were intended to relieve pressure on Block 5A and enable the company’s operations.”
But outside the reports, another picture emerges.
Prosecutors turn to a visit by Swedish journalist Oisin Cantwell, who travelled to the area in March 2001. Cantwell encountered thousands of displaced civilians living in dire conditions. He later testified that, beyond what people told him, the reality was visible: entire populations on the move, seeking refuge.
The same offensives that appear in internal documents as seasonal operations to secure the area are, on the ground, experienced as mass displacement and human suffering.
“There was no real effort,” Attorps argues, “to understand how the regime’s actions affected the civilian population.”
Other witnesses reinforce that picture. Journalist Bengt Nilsson described a strategy of divide-and-rule and proxy warfare. Another witness, Susanne Vissing Aagaard, spoke of the use of Antonov aircraft and helicopter gunships, and suggested that such attacks would likely have ceased had the oil companies withdrawn.
“Charges are proven in their entirety”
Attorps pauses briefly before delivering the prosecution’s conclusion: “Taken together, the evidence shows that the charges are proven in their entirety.”
Then he returns to what he describes as a chain of participation.
At its core, he argues, Ian Lundin contributed to the alleged crimes by insisting that the company’s operations be protected by the Sudanese military and by pushing forward projects, such as seismic exploration, that depended on the army taking control of areas previously outside government authority.
The prosecution requested ten years’ imprisonment for Lundin, the maximum fixed-term sentence available for gross violations of international law. “Given his position at the top of the company,” Attorps says, “the seriousness of his conduct is high. We submit that his participation reaches the upper limit of the sentencing scale.”
For Schneiter, the former CEO, the prosecution seeks a six-year sentence. At the same time, prosecutors ask that both men be taken into custody when the verdict is delivered. As Swiss citizens, they note, they cannot be extradited from Switzerland, and therefore present a concrete flight risk. The defence closing arguments are set to begin on 21 April and will continue for ten days, six devoted to Lundin’s defence, and four to that of Schneiter.
