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Liberia: Taylor's Former Vice President Describes Training, Arms Deliveries, And Atrocities
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GUEST BLOG
14 May 2008
Posted to the web 15 May 2008
The monitors of former President Charles Taylor's trial report for www.charlestaylortrial.org
In a highly anticipated development, Charles Taylor's former vice president, Moses Blah, took the witness stand today. Chief Prosecutor Stephen Rapp questioned him. Blah testified about the formation of Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), its training in Libya, and arming through Libya, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast.
Blah fingered Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi and Burkinabe President Blaise Compoare as key supporters of Taylor's 1989 rebel invasion of Liberia. In recounting the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Blah frequently said that he did not know about key developments. However, among the information he provided that supported the prosecution was a first-hand account of Taylor shrugging off reports of killings, rapes and looting directed at civilians by his forces in Sierra Leone. Blah also testified that eating human flesh was required before anyone could join Taylor's Executive Mansion Guard unit.
Before Blah took the stand this morning, Defense Counsel Terry Munyard completed his cross-examination of former Revolutionary United Front (RUF) commander Karmoh Kanneh and Prosecutor Julia Bailey conducted a brief re-examination of the witness.
Karmoh Kanneh completes his testimony
Defense Counsel Munyard resumed his cross-examination of Karmoh Kanneh by continuing to point to inconsistencies between his testimony and his prior statements to the prosecution. At the conclusion of the cross-examination Munyard asked the witness about payments from the court, as well as an accusation that he had brought marijuana with him from Freetown to The Netherlands.
Inconsistencies highlighted by Munyard included the following:
- Munyard read from notes of a prior statement in which the witness was reported to have said that he thought an RUF member named B.S. Massaquoi had been ordered killed by senior RUF commander Sam Bockarie because he had helped two people escape from prison. Kanneh denied having said this to the prosecution, and answered yes when Munyard asked if this had been an invention of the prosecution.
- Munyard recalled Kanneh's testimony that Sam Bockarie told a meeting of RUF commanders in December 1998 that he had planned the invasion of Freetown together with Charles Taylor in Monrovia. Asked whether he told this to prosecutors November 2007, Kanneh said yes. Munyard reviewed passages from prosecution notes of that interview and asked why Kanneh had not included this key detail. Kanneh pointed to part of the notes about commander "Jungle" telling the meeting that Taylor ordered the diamond mining areas to be taken first as proof that he had indeed told prosecutors about Taylor's involvement in making the plan.
- Kanneh testified that Bockarie told him in 2000 that Taylor was worried about being handed over to the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Munyard said that in all of his previous statements to the prosecution, Kanneh had mentioned the Sierra Leone government but not the Special Court. Kanneh disagreed, but the prosecution did not object to Munyard's contention.
Munyard briefly reviewed payments made to the witness by the prosecution and the court's Witness and Victims Section (WVS). These included travel reimbursements, food when he came to the court, and a witness attendance allowance, which Kanneh said had come from WVS and amounted to 16,000 Leones (just over 5 US dollars) per day.
The cross-examination ended with Munyard raising a report from a WVS official, in which an accusation had been leveled against Kanneh for allegedly bringing marijuana with him to The Netherlands. Kanneh said that WVS officials had confronted him, and he asked them to search his room in The Hague. He denied bringing marijuana from Sierra Leone and said he didn't even smoke. Munyard had no further questions for Kanneh.
Prosecutor Julia Bailey conducted a brief re-examination of Kanneh:
- Returning to the question of the killing of B.S. Massaquoi and the reference in Kanneh's prior statement to two people escaping from Sam Bockarie's custody in Kenema, Kanneh explained that he had been the main person to help them escape. He said they would have been executed and one was a small boy combatant. He said others also helped to arrange the escape.
- Bailey asked about one of the participants Kanneh listed as attending a December 1998 meeting of RUF commanders at Sam Bockarie's house. Kanneh said that "Martin" had been an operator for Bockarie, in charge of his satellite phone and computer.
- In reference to Munyard's review yesterday of a prior statement of Kanneh's relating to Armed Forces Revolutionary Council commander Saj Musa, Bailey reviewed notes from a different interview with Kanneh. Kanneh confirmed that he told prosecutors in March 2008 that Sam Bockarie had ordered the death of Musa, and that commander "Gullit" was to carry it out.
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Bailey had no further questions for Kanneh on re-examination. When the prosecution sought to admit into evidence a resolution of the United Nations Security Council, the defense objected. The resolution was from 2000, and the prosecution sought to use it to show that the Special Court had been contemplated at the time, and so it was not impossible for Taylor to have been worried about it at that time, as Munyard had implied in his cross-examination of Kanneh. Munyard argued that Bailey had not introduced the document through the witness. Bailey responded that the witness had already testified that he was not familiar with UN documents, so there would have been no purpose in trying to introduce the document through the witness. After several minutes of deliberation, the judges ruled in favor of the defense and refused to admit the document into evidence.
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