allAfrica.com: Liberia: Prosecution and Defense Offer Divergent Views of Rebel Structures as AB Sesay Concludes His Testimony (Page 1 of 3)

Liberia: Prosecution and Defense Offer Divergent Views of Rebel Structures as AB Sesay Concludes His Testimony

The monitors of former President Charles Taylor's trial report for www.charlestaylortrial.org

Prosecution and Defense Offer Divergent Views of Rebel Structures as AB Sesay Concludes His Testimony

Prosecution witness Alimamy Bobson Sesay completed his testimony today, with Defense Counsel Morris Anyah completing his cross-examination, and Prosecutor Shyamala Alagendra conducting a brief re-examination. The court sat half an hour beyond its normal time of adjournment in order to finish hearing Sesay's evidence before adjourning for Dutch holidays observed for the remainder of this week.

In the remainder of the cross-examination, the defense sought to establish that Liberians fighting in Sierra Leone had not been under the control of Charles Taylor and that the January 6, 1999 invasion of Freetown was carried out by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), with no senior participation by the Revolutionary United Front. In seeking to diminish Sesay's credibility, Defense Counsel Anyah highlighted the witness's participation in atrocities. Through a review of payments made by the Special Court to the witness, Anyah also implied that Sesay had a financial motive to testify against Taylor. During re-examination of Sesay, Prosecutor Alagendra focused on links between Taylor and the RUF, and the involvement of senior RUF leadership in the Freetown invasion.

Defense denies Taylor's role in supporting AFRC/RUF

Anyah began the day by asking Sesay about Liberians fighting in Sierra Leone. He showed the witness prosecution notes from a previous statement in which Sesay had told prosecutors that of the Liberians sent to reinforce AFRC/RUF forces in 1998 and 1999, he only knew of Special Task Force (STF) members. (According to previous testimony, STF members had part of their roots in the army of former Liberian President Samuel Doe and the anti-Taylor rebel movement ULIMO.) Sesay explained that when they first came, he and others had assumed they were all STF, until the commander who brought them, "05″, introduced a number of them as being former fighters of Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL). Anyah pointed to evidence from a previous witness, Perry Kamara, that the Liberians in the Red Lion Battalion were former bodyguards of Liberian RUF commander Dennis Mingo ("Superman"). Sesay said he didn't know about that and didn't dispute it, but stood by his contention that commander 05 introduced some of the Liberians as being former NPFL fighters.

Sesay repeated his testimony that a commander named "KBC", a member of the Sierra Leone Army (SLA - a term often used interchangeably with AFRC after May 1997) who had fled to Guinea with a group of SLA members in 1998, had collectively sought refuge in Liberia from the hostile Guinean government. According to Sesay, KBC said that Charles Taylor reorganized these forces, armed them, and sent them to senior RUF commander Sam Bockarie ("Mosquito") for use in the January 1999 invasion of Freetown. When KBC arrived he was with only three other Liberian fighters. Anyah pointed to this, and Sesay's testimony that there were about 20 former NPFL fighters in the Red Lion Battalion in seeking to diminish the prosecution contention that Taylor played a significant role in the Freetown invasion. Sesay responded by saying that KBC told him his group had been much larger, but that they had fought in places including Kono, Magburaka and Makeni, where attacks on ECOMOG forces had been an integral part of the larger invasion plan. Sesay said that without the rebel attacks in these places, ECOMOG would have been able to reinforce its troops in Freetown to repel the invasion force. Sesay testified that a further 50 reinforcements, some of them STF Liberians, came to reinforce the AFRC/RUF forces retreating from Freetown in the third week of January 1999. Anyah asked why Sesay had previously only spoken of SLA/RUF fighters with this group of reinforcements, and Sesay explained that apart from the SLA, all other fighters referred to themselves as RUF once they were fighting together.

Anyah read comments from Charles Taylor at a press conference during the war, in which Taylor said that Liberians fighting in Sierra Leone were mercenaries fighting on their own. Sesay agreed that some were in the STF, which was still officially a part of the Sierra Leone Army, but said that Liberian RUF fighters named by Anyah were not part of the SLA or STF. He asked to add a comment about the Taylor press conference, but Presiding Judge Teresa Doherty cut him off and told him that the prosecution would have an opportunity to raise the issue on re-examination.

Anyah easily established that Sesay had no first-hand knowledge of diamond transactions between the RUF and Liberia, and had only been told about them by Superman. Sesay agreed with Anyah that this was the case, and also said he had no knowledge of diamond transactions between AFRC leader Johnny Paul Koroma and Charles Taylor.

Argument that the AFRC acted without senior RUF involvement in Freetown

Anyah tried to establish that the AFRC had its own reasons for invading Freetown. In answer to his questions, Sesay confirmed that there was discontent in the military under the new president of Sierra Leone, Ahmad Tejan-Kabbah, following his 1996 election. He also agreed that talk of a coup had circulated before the army toppled Kabbah in May 1997, but that prior to this, there had been no cooperation between the SLA and the RUF. Sesay confirmed that when the junta period ended in February 1998, there were still separate AFRC and RUF commanders.

web allafrica.com	Enter your search terms	Submit search form
OR subscribers use AllAfrica's premium search engine


Use our pull-down menus to find more stories