TotalEnergies denied fuel to rescue helicopters during Mozambique attack

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WINCHESTER, England — TotalEnergies refused fuel to helicopters evacuating civilians as Islamist militants overran the Mozambican town of Palma in 2021 and later denied British special forces use of its nearby construction site for a rescue mission, a British inquest heard this week.

The four-day hearing in Winchester was a coroner’s inquest, a British judicial proceeding to establish how and why Philip Mawer — a 58-year-old British construction contractor working on the French energy giant’s gas plant project — was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade while fleeing the assault.

The claims emerged in testimony and evidence presented during the hearing; the coroner did not, however, find that TotalEnergies’ decisions affected rescue efforts, saying Mawer’s security was the sole responsibility of his employer, a Dubai-based contractor, and the hotel at which he stayed.

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.”

In response to a request for comment for this article, TotalEnergies referred POLITICO to its previous statements.

The coroner’s court heard that Mawer, country manager for Dubai-based contractor RA International, was in northern Mozambique helping build TotalEnergies’ gas project near Palma — an area that had been subject to Islamist attacks since 2017. By March 2021, rebels had cut land access to the project and the town.

TotalEnergies evacuated its own staff and allowed 700 Mozambican soldiers to deploy inside its fortified concession, while thousands of contractors and subcontractors remained in Palma, living in hotels protected by guards with wooden batons and protected around town by a few dozen soldiers and policemen. When militants attacked the town on March 24, Mawer took shelter in a hotel with 182 other people.

On March 26, after two days trapped at the hotel, Mawer fled in a convoy. A rocket-propelled grenade struck his vehicle, killing him.

The inquest heard that two members of Britain’s Special Air Service flew from Kenya to Mozambique intending to rescue Mawer. Francesca Wiley, a lawyer representing Mawer’s family, told the court that the SAS was denied permission to use TotalEnergies’ site. While debating their next move on March 27, the SAS were informed that Mawer was already dead.

The inquest also heard that TotalEnergies refused to supply fuel to helicopters operated by South African private military contractor Dyck Advisory Group, which was evacuating civilians from Palma. DAG chief Max Dyck said the lack of fuel limited the rescue effort. “Could we have saved a lot more people?” Dyck testified. “Definitely.”

TotalEnergies’ Mozambican subsidiary was represented by lawyer Adam Payter. He argued that Mawer was a subcontractor who was not formally under the company’s protection and for whom it had no evacuation plan.

Mawer’s brothers, Bill and Mark, accused TotalEnergies of abandoning him. “Why did Total refuse fuel and landing rights to the helicopter evacuation effort?” they said in a statement after the hearing. “Why was our brother allowed to die so close to a protected compound and a substantial military force?”

At the inquest, Detective Chief Inspector Patrick Allen of Britain’s SO15 counterterrorism command said a death toll of 1,402 was consistent with his unit’s own investigation. He also agreed with Mawer’s lawyer, Wiley, when she described the Palma assault as the “second biggest terror attack of all time, after 9/11.”