The NEWS
(Monrovia)
7 October 2008
Monrovia — The 50th prosecution witness in the ongoing trial of the former Liberian president Charles Taylor has told the Special Court for Sierra Leone that rebels killed his brother because they said he had great resemblance to the former Liberian president Samuel Kanyon Doe.
The witness, Patrick Sheriff, told the Judges that the rebels killed his brother and chopped off his fingers. He said the worst atrocities he saw in the Sierra Leone civil war were committed by a rebel commander named "Peleto", who earned another nickname "Friday" because he went on a killing spree on every Friday.
The witness explained that Peleto went to a place called "Manor Corner" one Friday and moved from house to house killing civilians indiscriminately.
Witness Sheriff gave an account of how Peleto met a man known only as Mr. Kai who was reading a bible when he ordered him to drop it and stand up.
"As the man stood up, he shot him with a pistol a minute after killing him, he moved again and met another man eating rice, and he also shot him dead..."
During cross-examination, defence lawyer, Terry Munyard pressed him on his earlier statement that the rebels he saw were Liberian English-speaking men dressed in uniforms with the inscription "RUF".
But Sheriff insisted that the rebels who attacked Waterloo and Lumpa outside Freetown were "purely Liberian rebels."
He said he was given 150 lashes and that after ECOMOG had driven the rebels from Lumpa he and other civilians constituted a committee that buried 60 civilians allegedly killed by the rebels.
At this point, Justice Julia Sebutinde asked the witness about the composition of the sixty people killed and he replied that they were all men and boys, adding "there were no women because mostly they used women for their own selfish needs."
Defence lawyer Munyard asked the witness whether the events of the war had affected his memory and that he could not remember most of the events.
Witness Sheriff told the court that he could vividly remember everything that happened to him during the war.
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