Using maps, drilling data, and technical explanations, Alexandre Schneiter, the former CEO of Lundin Oil, tried to distance himself from responsibility for war crimes around Block 5A, an oil extraction site located in a territory that is now in South Sudan. But the prosecutor’s questions were not just about what was beneath the surface, but also about what the company knew – and did – when the civil war raged above the oil fields.
“Three lines on a map! How can three lines on a map be aiding and abetting war crimes?”
It is recess in courtroom 34 on the second floor of the district court in Stockholm, and one of Alexandre Schneiter’s lawyers vents frustration while descending the winding stairs to the café during a break.
Autumn turned into winter, and winter into what is known in Sweden as the fifth season: spring-winter, while Swiss national Schneiter has been interrogated between 4 February and mid-March 2025.
Half of the historic 300-day trial against two executives of the Swedish Company Lundin Oil has passed, a trial where they have to answer accusations of complicity in war crimes in southern Sudan between 1997 and 2003. Coming after his co-defendant Ian Lundin’s uneasy interrogation, Schneiter and his defence have been crystal clear: he was technically responsible for finding oil in the million-years-old sediment layers beneath Sudan’s surface. But he had nothing to do with security or operational activities.
“No responsibility for anything above the surface”
A few weeks before the discussion about the three lines on a map, the former CEO asked to say a few words at the start of his testimony. “We have heard a lot about seismic in court, and geophysics is, simply put, the study of our earth and the gathering of data using the laws of physics like magnetism, gravity, and seismic activity,” he explained.
Schneiter joined the Lundin Group in 1992 as a geologist. His straight career path is built on his ability to find oil where others drilled dry. The only source ever found in Block 5A until today was discovered by Schneiter. A photo of the core sample from Thar Yath, drilled in 1999, is shown on the Stockholm district court’s screens. Schneiter explains, without getting too technical, that the black spots in the soil are oil.
“It is not relevant, but still interesting that what we are seeing is rock that is 100 million years old,” Schneiter continued, emphasizing that his focus was always on what lay beneath the earth’s surface and that he had no responsibility for anything above it. No production ever took place, he added. Unlike the neighbours in Blocks 1, 2 and 4, which exported oil, not a single drop was produced from Block 5A.
Only after several hours of lectures does Schneiter comment on one of the charges: “In my view, it is entirely incorrect to claim that my participation in a couple of meetings would have had any impact on the conflict in the country.”
Building a road through an uncontrolled area
According to prosecutors, it’s the opposite. The three lines on the map represent planned seismic lines — kilometer-long cables with small explosive devices attached and used to listen to what’s hidden underground. The map was presented by Schneiter at a meeting with representatives of Sudan in October 2001 and crossed an area not controlled by the Sudanese regime at the time.
The prosecutors refer to the area as MOK or the Nhialdiu area. According to them, the Sudanese military subsequently demanded that a road to Nhialdiu be constructed to secure planned seismic surveys in the MOK operational areas, which the company, according to the charges, accepted. According to witnesses and company security reports, the area was later affected by heavy fighting.
A plan to build a road through an area not controlled by the Sudanese military or allied militias should have signalled to the accused that it would lead to military offensives, according to the prosecution. Offensives during which the military would carry out indiscriminate attacks against civilians.
But when the prosecutor displays the seismic maps from the “Exploration Development Strategy 2002” document during the hearing, Schneiter brightens and says he is pleased to finally explain what the maps show. Something he believes neither his defence nor the prosecutors have understood.
“What the image shows is the bedrock in Block 5A. Imagine this as a bathtub, the edges are the shallow parts, and the basin is the deeper part. Fill the bathtub with sand, and you get the Muglad Basin,” Schneiter explains joyfully.
He argues that this part of the earth is something that does not change. The depth to the bedrock and the shape of the basin are constants in geology. “As a company, you don’t want to prospect in the deeper sections; you want to focus on the shallower parts,” he adds.
For the prosecutor, the image has been used to show that Lundin had an interest in the MOK area. But according to Schneiter, it merely describes a “trend” indicating that the area is deep and that MOK would be the least suitable place to explore.
“We don’t care if it’s Iran, Sudan, or the North Sea”
“Let’s be clear: when a geophysicist looks at this, they don’t care if it’s Iran, Sudan, or the North Sea,” Schneiter continues, explaining that in a reservoir, there are deeper sections, but the quality decreases, and eventually, the oil turns into gas. The tone is once more lecturing: the prosecutors have misunderstood oil exploration – or how an oil company operates.
The difference in how Schneiter responds is striking compared to Lundin, the former president of Lundin Oil, who has been interrogated in the previous month. Lundin often did not recall details, while Schneiter wants to be correct, remembers specifics, and stands firm to reject the prosecutor’s narrative and documents.
For him, it is not just about rejecting accusations, but about telling a story where the company has built roads to win acceptance among villages and ran clinics to gain support. It was never just about searching for oil, but about lifting the country out of poverty with support from the international community’s various bodies.
Trying to connect Schneiter to the earth surface
Often, it leads to a tug-of-war with the prosecutors over Schneiter’s involvement in the operations and what was handled locally in Block 5A or at the Khartoum office. When the prosecutors highlight that Schneiter met with South Sudan Independence Movement’s general, Paulino Matip – whose militia group fought against Peter Gadet’s Sudan People’s Liberation Army, alongside the government- to obtain permission to fly helicopters in Block 5A, Schneiter presents a different version.
“It was a coincidence. I had just landed in Khartoum and was checking in when I saw Matip in the hotel lobby,” Schneiter says. The fact that the flight permit was later approved if they avoided “the southern part” of the block is not something he remembers. “I don’t remember asking him for any permit,” Schneiter asserts.
Prosecutors continued trying to link Schneiter to operations by showing that when the rig in Thar Yath was attacked and security guards were killed in May 1999, it was noted in the incident log that he was the person the staff called – but Schneiter claims he does not remember this. His explanation is that his name was on a “general crisis call list”.
After five days of questioning, prosecutors discussed a meeting between representatives of Sudan and the company in October 2000, where Schneiter was allegedly exposed to the first complicity act. In the meeting minutes, an image of “significant incidents” affecting the company was presented. Prosecutor Henrik Attorps showed metadata revealing that the incident list was found during a house search at the defendant’s Swiss domicile.
Schneiter claimed not to have seen the list, which recorded hundreds of incidents, but recalled that rebel leader Gadet was attacking, and the army was defending itself. The company had halted operations and was merely observing the situation. However, the prosecutor argued that the list demonstrated Schneiter’s knowledge of conflicts and armed confrontations.
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“From my understanding at that time, it was about tribal conflicts, and that Gadet was becoming increasingly troublesome, but I had no way to influence this,” Schneiter answered.
– “Further west, it says large forces are stationed to counter the threat from Gadet and to ensure Block 5A’s safety. This reasoning – that the military allocated resources for your security – is that something you had been informed about at that time?”, the prosecutor continued.
Schneiter replied that security was not his area of responsibility and that his understanding was that the army provided a “neutral guard force”.
– “But when you heard about this neutral guard force, how does that align with 1,600 soldiers being stationed in the block and large troops further west?
– I was in the field, and I saw with my own eyes that there was a neutral guard force, friendly guards, and this document is not a fact, it is an estimation,” Schneiter replied.
At the start of the trial, the prosecutor presented a drawing of red staircase, with each stair symbolizing an action and therefore a higher level of complicity, to illustrate how various actions, or “acts of complicity” contributed to enabling crimes committed in Block 5A during the so-called crime period. Schneiter’s defence questioned the prosecutor’s methodology, where it is alleged that Schneiter, by “informing” the Sudanese about planned activities, demanded military interventions.
After Schneiter’s interrogation, the court will start hearing about 50 witnesses during the rest of 2025 and into 2026. Since the interrogations with the two defendants took more time than expected, the new expected date for the end of Sweden’s longest running trial is now set to May 2026.
Martin Schibbye is a Swedish Freelance journalist and founder of the news website Blankspot.se.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
