By Esra Taskın
PARIS (AA) - A French court overseeing the trial of cement company Lafarge on charges of “financing a terrorist organization” heard testimony from civil parties Friday.
The hearings, in which Lafarge as a legal entity and eight defendants are being tried on the same charge, continued at the Paris Criminal Court.
While the defendants answered the prosecutor’s questions, several individuals from the civil party were heard.
Cannelle Lavite, co-director of the Business and Human Rights Unit at Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), explained as a civil party that it had been working on the complaint they filed in France in 2016 against the company together with the anti-corruption NGO Sherpa and 11 former Lafarge employees.
Lavite said that after submitting the complaint, other former Syrian employees of Lafarge contacted them, reporting the increasing violence of armed groups, the increasing brutality at checkpoints and their fear of being kidnapped.
She added that Syrian workers said they did not understand why they were left behind when French staff were evacuated, and described how they fled the area after the 2014 attack on the plant.
- Sherpa urges companies to be held accountable for their activities
Sherpa member Anna Kiefer said their association wanted to draw attention to how the alleged financing of terror groups affected former Syrian employees.
Kiefer explained that they began working on the issue after French daily Le Monde published a report on Lafarge in 2016, emphasizing that companies must be held accountable for their activities.
- Case helps illuminate fundamental aspect of terrorism phenomenon, Fenvac says
Chantal Cutajar, a member of the National Federation of Victims of Terrorist Attacks and Mas-Casualty Accidents (Fenvac), said the alleged financing contributed to the growth of terror organizations.
Emphasizing the need to understand how terrorism develops to protect victims, Cutajar stressed that the case helps illuminate a fundamental aspect of the phenomenon of terrorism.
Bruno Pescheux, a defendant and former CEO of Lafarge’s Syrian subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS) from 2008 to 2014, said Lafarge’s representatives in different countries had limited freedom and were not entirely free in matters such as hiring employees.
Jacob Waerness, a defendant who had previously worked in intelligence in Norway and served as a security officer at Lafarge between 2011 and 2013, said he gathered information for the company in Damascus, Aleppo and around the cement plant.
Waerness said that when he accepted the job in Syria, calm prevailed in the region, and when he started working there, there was no indication that he would be going to meet with terrorists.
Waerness noted that in 2011 he passed through checkpoints controlled by the now-fallen Assad regime but did not make any payments there.
- Former CEO says request to close Syrian plant never reached him
Bruno Lafont, a defendant and CEO of Lafarge between 2006 and 2015, said individuals working for the company traveled frequently and certain precautions needed to be taken.
Lafont noted the company had created a security committee that he wanted to remain independent and he did not intervene or request reports.
He claimed he would have agreed to closing the Syrian plant if he had been informed, but the request never reached him.
Lafont further said he relied on internal information about the situation in Syria and that they never discussed LCS at length.
He also underscored that he had long questioned why Christian Herrault, deputy managing director of operations at Lafarge, never shared his concerns about Syria but could not speculate.
- Anadolu published evidence proving Lafarge financed terror group ISIS
On Sept. 7, 2021, Anadolu drew international attention by publishing documents proving that Lafarge financed the ISIS terror group with the knowledge of French intelligence.
According to the documents, the firm regularly informed French intelligence services about its relations with ISIS while French intelligence and state institutions failed to warn Lafarge that it was committing crimes against humanity by financing terrorism, as admitted in confidential records.
ISIS used cement purchased from the French firm to build terror shelters and tunnels.
As part of an investigation launched in June 2017, several senior executives, including Lafarge’s former CEO Bruno Lafont, were charged with financing terrorism.
The charge of complicity in crimes against humanity brought against the company in 2018 was dropped in 2019, but civil parties to the case, the anti-corruption NGO Sherpa and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, filed an appeal.
On Sept. 7, 2021, France’s Court of Cassation issued a ruling allowing Lafarge to be charged with complicity in crimes against humanity for financing ISIS terrorists in Syria.
In May 2022, the Paris Court of Appeals approved the launch of an investigation into Lafarge, whose financing of Daesh was proven by documents obtained by Anadolu, on charges of complicity in crimes against humanity.
In January 2024, France’s Court of Cassation rejected a request to drop the complicity in crimes against humanity charges against Lafarge, allowing the investigation to proceed
That October, three investigating judges decided that the Lafarge group and four of its former executives would stand trial on charges of financing a terror group and violating the EU embargo that bans all financial and commercial relations with terror groups, including ISIS.