At the center of that inquiry is an accusation that, three months before the container killings, the company abandoned contractors who were building its gas plant to a devastating ISIS attack in March 2021 on the adjacent town of Palma.
A house-to-house survey carried out by POLITICO found 1,354 civilians were killed in that attack, 330 of them beheaded. Other reporting established that 55 of those dead were from TotalEnergies’ workforce. The company, which has claimed it lost none of its workforce during the attack, denies the accusations.
Widespread abuse
The Dutch report indicates the container massacre was part of a systematic pattern of mass rape and execution in reprisal for the ISIS attack carried out by the army against villagers living around TotalEnergies’ plant.
With ISIS militants roaming the area for weeks after their attack on Palma, 25,000 to 30,000 people sought shelter outside Total’s gates, which “exacerbated the already dire humanitarian situation,” the report reads.
“By June 2021, the situation had become catastrophic, with people (including many children) reported to be dying on a daily basis due to starvation, disease or a lack of medical treatment,” the report reads. The army’s response was to steal aid, and sell looted food at inflated prices.
It was also at this point that an army “unable to distinguish ‘villagers’ from ‘terrorists,’” took its revenge on the civilian population.