Two ex­ec­u­tives of a Swedish oil ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny went on tri­al Tues­day in Stock­holm for se­cur­ing the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions in Su­dan through their al­leged com­plic­i­ty in war crimes in 20 years ago.

Swedish pros­e­cu­tors claim that for­mer Lundin Oil chair­man Ian Lundin and the com­pa­ny’s for­mer CEO, Alex Schneit­er sup­port­ed the Su­danese gov­ern­ment of for­mer dic­ta­tor Omar al-Bashir, who was top­pled in an April 2019 pop­u­lar up­ris­ing.

The two ex­ec­u­tives are ac­cused of in­volve­ment in the Su­danese gov­ern­ment’s mil­i­tary cam­paign to clear an area in south­ern Su­dan for oil pro­duc­tion. The cam­paign “en­tailed the Su­danese mil­i­tary and regime-al­lied mili­tia sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly at­tack­ing civil­ians or at least car­ry­ing out sys­tem­at­ic at­tacks in vi­o­la­tion of the prin­ci­ples of dis­tinc­tion and pro­por­tion­al­i­ty,” the pros­e­cu­tors said.

Lundin told re­porters at the Stock­holm Dis­trict Court that the ac­cu­sa­tions were “com­plete­ly false.”

“We look for­ward to de­fend­ing our­selves in court,” he said.

The tri­al is ex­pect­ed to run un­til ear­ly 2026.

A 1983-2005 civ­il war be­tween the Mus­lim-dom­i­nat­ed north and Chris­t­ian south tore Su­dan apart. A sep­a­rate con­flict in Dar­fur, the war-scarred re­gion of west­ern Su­dan, be­gan in 2003. Thou­sands of peo­ple were killed and near­ly 200,000 dis­placed.

South Su­dan gained in­de­pen­dence from Su­dan in 2011 to be­come the world’s youngest na­tion.

Swedish pros­e­cu­tors said the Su­danese gov­ern­ment con­duct­ed of­fen­sive mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the Block 5A oil field and its vicin­i­ty in south­ern Su­dan be­tween May 1999 and March 2003 to gain con­trol of ar­eas for oil prospect­ing and to cre­ate the nec­es­sary con­di­tions for oil ex­trac­tion, the pros­e­cu­tion said.

Dur­ing the mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions, se­vere vi­o­la­tions of in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an law were com­mit­ted, it said.

In a state­ment, the pros­e­cu­tion said Lundin and Schneit­er “par­tic­i­pat­ed in the con­clu­sion” of an agree­ment in­volv­ing a right to search for and ex­tract oil in a larg­er area in south­ern Su­dan “in ex­change for the pay­ment of fees and a share in fu­ture prof­its.”

Lundin was the op­er­a­tor of a con­sor­tium of com­pa­nies ex­plor­ing Block 5A, in­clud­ing Malaysia’s Petronas Cari­gali Over­seas, OMV (Su­dan) Ex­plo­ration GmbH of Aus­tria, and the Su­danese state-owned oil com­pa­ny Su­dapet Ltd.

The pros­e­cu­tion wants the ex­ec­u­tives barred from con­duct­ing busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties for 10 years and the Swedish com­pa­ny fined 3 mil­lion kro­nor ($272,250). They al­so want 1.4 bil­lion kro­nor ($127 mil­lion) con­fis­cat­ed from Lundin Oil be­cause of eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits that were achieved from the al­leged crimes.

In Swe­den, the max­i­mum penal­ty for com­plic­i­ty in war crimes is a life prison sen­tence, which gen­er­al­ly means a min­i­mum of 20 to 25 years. Pros­e­cu­tors typ­i­cal­ly re­quest the pun­ish­ment they want for a con­vic­tion at the end of tri­als.

STOCK­HOLM (AP)