Coroner Jason Pegg ruled on Thursday that Mawer was unlawfully killed by an unknown person, but accepted an argument by lawyers from TotalEnergies’ Mozambican subsidiary that the company had no legal duty of care to him because he was a subcontractor.
The testimony could carry consequences in France, where TotalEnergies faces two criminal complaints over its Mozambique operations, including an involuntary manslaughter case tied to the deaths of contractors during the Palma attack. A French investigating magistrate was appointed last year to examine that complaint.
“These hearings were crucial, crucial, crucial,” said Henri Thulliez, a French human rights lawyer who filed both criminal complaints in Paris and who was in Winchester to watch proceedings. “Finally, we have people talking under oath about what happened in Palma. It’s very important, and very rare when it comes to accountability for multinationals.”
Thulliez’s second complaint accuses TotalEnergies of complicity in war crimes and torture. It alleges the energy giant became an accomplice in a massacre — first reported by POLITICO — in which Mozambican soldiers brutalized, starved, suffocated, executed or disappeared around 200 men at the company’s gatehouse from June to September 2021.
TotalEnergies has denied responsibility for the deaths during the ISIS attack, which killed 1,354 civilians, including 55 people working on the TotalEnergies project, according to a house-to-house survey carried out by POLITICO. In response to questions from POLITICO, it acknowledged in 2024 that “a small number” of project workers had been stationed outside its secure compound during the attack and exposed to the bloodbath.
In 2025, the company — through its subsidiary Mozambique LNG — told POLITICO it had no knowledge of the gatehouse killings, adding that its “extensive research” had “not identified any information nor evidence that would corroborate the allegations of severe abuses and torture.”
