Mariama Khai Fornah
20 October 2008
Hague — Almost every day victims of amputation, rape and other forms of atrocities by rebels loyal to the RUF in Sierra Leone are making their way to the Dutch city of The Hague to testify against the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor.
Mr Taylor is accused of sponsoring acts of terrorism meted out by the erstwhile rebel group. In just two days the prosecution has produced seven victims of the war as witnesses.
The 59th prosecution witness, an amputee, told the judges of the Special Court that the rebels amputated a six-year old girl and placed it in the mouth of a dead police officer in the northern town of Kabala. Sieh Mansaray said the rebels remarked that the hand was meant to be the policeman's last food.
He quoted the rebels as saying that they started their orgy of amputation with the 6-year-old was indication that they would not spare anybody.
Mansaray also testified that in Kabala the rebels amputated several civilians including a woman who was eight months pregnant. He said a rebel commander gave instructions for the amputation of the civilians on a piece of paper.
The witness went on to say that prior to the amputation, the rebel commander had told his men to prioritise the burning of houses in Kabala decide the fate of the civilians later. "They said go, go to Kabala, say these hands that have been cut off, tell them these were the hands which you used to vote for the civilian government..."
Earlier the 58 th prosecution witness had told the court that he was captured and stripped naked along with 50 other residents of Tumbudu in the eastern Kono district and forced to mine for diamonds for the rebels.
Tamba Yomba Ngekia said rebels aged six, ten and eleven years held civilians at gunpoint while they mined. He said the rebels brought another 70 civilians, with one tied in the waist.
He recalled the severe flogging and shooting of one S.E Songbeh for saying that he was too weak to mine following an order by one of the rebel leaders that anybody who refused to work be shot.
"Then he asked Mr. Songbeh, 'are you the one who said you were not going to work? Are you the one who said you are not going to work?' And he shot him three times. Then he fell down. We were sitting down there, wanting to cry. How could we have?" Tamba told the court.
The third witness who took the stand was a woman who said she suffered sexual violence at the hands of the rebels. 50-year-old Roko Turay said she was raped by three of the rebels. On cross-examination, she clarified that the rebels who raped her spoke in Krio, and that she did not hear any of them speaking Liberian English.
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