Meet the climate catastrophe victim filing a criminal case against the bosses of oil firm Total

After his friend Rosa was swept away, 14-year-old Benjamin Van Bunderen Robberechts sat watching the treetops sway left to right outside the window.

He slouched in the chair because if he sat up, he could still see the raging stream that had taken her as they tried to reach their campsite base in Marcourt, Belgium.

“I thought then this is a moment I’m going to remember for the rest of my life,” he says. “I could hear the water and I could see the flashes of sirens through the window - police, ambulance, fire. But I was just sitting there looking at the trees.”

Rosa Reichel, 15, was one of more than 200 people who died in Western Europe’s July 2021 floods, which scientists say were made 20 times more intense by the climate crisis.

Despite the oily fingerprints of climate change, extreme weather disasters like this are usually framed as crimes without a perpetrator. But Benjamin, now 17, thinks he knows who the chief culprits are.

Alongside eight other climate victims and three NGOs, the teenager has launched a criminal case in Paris against the CEO, directors and main shareholders of TotalEnergies - the world’s sixth-biggest fossil fuel company.

Filed on 21 May, it is the first criminal complaint of its kind from victims and NGOs against the individuals running an oil and gas major. It comes after a surge in successful civil climate cases.

“What Total is doing is criminal, what they're doing is hurting people. It's killing people. So they have to be stopped,” Benjamin tells Euronews Green from his home in Brussels. “And it's clear that they're not going to do it on their own, or the politicians aren't going to stop them. So the last person to go to then is a judge.”

Benjamin has been attending climate marches since he was 10 years old. His desire to make a difference brought him to the United World Colleges summer camp on 10 July 2021.

After months of COVID lockdown, he was eager to make friends - and that wish was quickly granted. “I met an amazing girl there, Rosa,” he says, beginning a story he has told many times. 

Their conversations ranged from the near future - plans to visit a beautiful forest in Brussels, where Rosa also lived - to their adult dreams;