Yemeni victims sue French company Total over torture

French energy giant Total has been sued in a new lawsuit by two individuals who were imprisoned and tortured at one of the company's gas plants in Yemen.

According to Press TV, in the lawsuit reported by media on Thursday, the lawyers of the two Yemeni men said their clients were jailed and tortured by Emirati forces at the company's gas plant in Balhaf, Yemen.

Total must take responsibility for its failure to identify and prevent these men's rights violations at the site run by a subsidiary of Total, the lawsuit demanded.

The French energy giant is the largest shareholder of Yemen LNG, the company operating the Balhaf gas liquefaction plant in the southern governorate of Shabwah, where the men were imprisoned in 2018 and 2019, lawyers said in the lawsuit filed by the lawyers at the Paris Court of Justice on Wednesday.

The lawyers reasoned that Total company had failed to identify and prevent human rights violations as required by a 2017 French law which makes large French companies publish an annual plan to establish and mitigate the impacts on human rights and the environment of their project work or those of their subsidiaries.

“Total must take responsibility for the violations committed by UAE forces in Balhaf,” said Alexis Thiry, legal advisor for the Geneva-based MENA Rights Group which represents the men.

Thiry said it was “disappointing” that Total was excepting the Yemeni plant from its vigilance plan “despite being informed of gross human rights abuses on the site on multiple occasions.”

In the meantime, gas production at the Balhaf plant stopped in early 2015 after the Saudis launched the war on Yemen.

In March 2017, some of the French company's facilities were requisitioned by the Saudi-led coalition forces – Emirati forces in this case.

ME