From Nuremberg to now: How a war crimes trial in Sweden is changing legal history

The biggest trial in Swedish history doesn’t concern events in Stockholm , Malmo or Gothenburg — but at a drill site in war-torn Sudan .

The case against two former executives from one of those companies is expected to be Sweden ’s longest and most expensive case ever.

They are being prosecuted under a legal principle known as “universal jurisdiction” which allows a country to prosecute a foreign national for crimes committed outside its territory.

U.S. courts are playing a role, ordering ExxonMobil and banana giant Chiquita to stand trial for atrocities committed in Indonesia and Colombia .

France is emerging as the epicenter of global corporate justice.

Close to a dozen legal cases against French companies and French bosses are now working their way through the French justice system.

It took five years for the Swedish Prosecution Authority to begin a preliminary investigation into Lundin oil in Sudan .

It took another 11 for prosecutors to charge Lundin and Scheitner . The trial will last two and a half years . Appeals and final verdicts will take until the decade’s end .