Human Rights Project, Human Rights Program, Anthropology Program, and Africana Studies Program Present

A Swedish Nuremberg?: Corporate Complicity in War Crimes in Sudan and the Trial of Two Oil Executives in Stockholm

The international human rights movement is in crisis, with a decline in support from major powers, and key institutions such as the International Criminal Court in disarray. In Sweden, however, the government has mounted a large-scale war crimes trial – now in its third year – the most extensive trial in Swedish history. Two directors of Lundin Oil, once the country’s largest energy company, stand accused of complicity in crimes committed during oil exploration in Sudan: in the words of a headline in Bloomberg News, "Oil Billionaire Ian Lundin Risks Jail”.

In bringing the Lundin directors to trial the Swedish government is projecting a principle of universal jurisdiction that dates back to the Nuremberg trials and before – the idea that no one anywhere should be beyond the reach of the law. The prosecutions at Nuremberg of executives of German companies that used slave labor in the 1939-45 World War were limited, but it has been argued that the new wave of corporate prosecutions under national law – of which the Lundin trial is the leading example – are an indication of a possible future for the pursuit of human rights. The directors of Lundin Oil are accused of aiding Sudan government forces in a campaign of violent displacement during the 1983-2005 civil war in Sudan (the conflict that led to the independence of South Sudan in 2011). The prosecution alleges that Lundin requested security from the government of Sudan in the knowledge that this would involve forcible displacement, and that they allowed airstrips built by Lundin to be used by Sudan government helicopter gunships to attack villages and kill or expel their inhabitants. But the two Lundin executives deny the charges, asserting that the company operated lawfully.

As an anthropologist and human rights researcher with experience in the Sudanese oil zone, John Ryle was called to testify in the trial (one of more than ninety witnesses, including thirty from South Sudan), spending a day under examination on the witness stand in the District Court in Stockholm. He will discuss his experience of participation in the trial, the nature of the communities that live in the oil zone, and their indigenous legal systems, the distinction between restorative and retributive justice, and connections to the current crises in Sudan and South Sudan, and the realities of research in war zones, where often, in the phrase of the late US senator Hiram Johnson, truth is the first casualty.

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For more information, call 720-635-8882, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Olin Humanities, Room 203

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