28 October 2008
It's more than a year since Charles Taylor was bundled up and sent to The Hague to face the 11-count indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity brought against him by the Special Hybrid Court for Sierra Leone.
The case had been in out of court docket on legal technicalities raised by both prosecution and defense counsels. One point of contention was whether Taylor can face the court and defend himself.
Now the prosecution is loosening up, guardedly, and there are indications that both sides are read. With UN help, Liberian police stopped and searched a car suspected of carrying drugs to decide Taylor's fate.
The Analyst Staff Writer has been looking at journalist Joseph Cheeseman's interview with the Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Stephen Rapp.
The Chief Prosecutor of the Sierra Leone's hybrid Special Court, Stephen Rapp, said Charles Taylor can defense himself in court provided he is willing to testify first as "first witness".
The Chief prosecutor, who claimed that there is three times more evidence to convict Mr. Taylor than in any other war crimes case he had ever prosecuted, said the prosecution was ready to end the Taylor debacle.
According to him, the requirement for Mr. Taylor to testify first as "first witness" prior to appearing in his own defense was a legal procedure adopted by the Special Court from the English Criminal Rule of which he said the defense was well versed.
"This is a Rule that the Court has. It's a Rule that actually is the same as that in the English system in which Mr. Griffiths practices, but to some extent it's to make sure that the Accused doesn't mould his story depending on what others have said in his Defence case. He has to put it on himself first.
But it's the Rule, we follow the Rules, and we're looking forward to seeing Mr. Taylor in the box if that's his decision," Prosecutor Rapp reportedly told special court reporter Joseph Cheeseman in the interview.
As evidence of the prosecution's readiness to convict Mr. Taylor, Mr. Rapp confirmed defense counsels' allegation that the Special Court has been spending a fortune to ferry witnesses to The Hague.
He said the court may have spent more than the US $20,000.00 per person the defense has alleged the prosecution spent for the transportation and welfare of the witnesses.
"Well certainly, it may be more than that. I mean when you deal with the fact that some of these people are injured and have serious health problems and sometimes have to have a family escort with them.
"The Court, however, has negotiated a very reasonable fare with an airline that brings these people to Europe, so we do it on a cost-efficient basis. And there is a safe house where there are beds and staffing and everything else.
But it certainly costs money to the Court to present this kind of testimony," the Special Court chief prosecutor said.
He said the court had to resort to presenting witnesses physically in court after the defense opposed to the presentation of witness testimony through video link.
"So we're doing it because we have to, and it's our obligation, it's the mandate, it's my sworn duty to prove this case with the best evidence that I can and prove it according to the Rules," he said.
The defense, though, was not satisfied with the prosecution's justification for the use of such huge amount on witnesses, arguing that the money used to ferry the witnesses and lodge them could have been better used as reparation to the poor people of Sierra Leone.
"Well we care a lot about reparation, and we're looking for ways that we hope to be able to pursue Mr. Taylor's assets to provide reparation to victims.
"The money that the Court has used is money that has been obtained from justice funds from countries that want to see international justice succeed.
These aren't funds that go to development projects; indeed there are wide development projects in Sierra Leone that deal with victims.
Recently the UN peace building Commission donated three million dollars to the Victim Reparation Fund. Not enough has been done in that area, but it's our position always that it's important that justice be done," Rapp said.
On the defense counsel's description of the prosecution's so-called "compelling evidence" as "rubbish", the chief prosecutor said the language used by the defense was "hard to respond to".
"This evidence of these human beings and what they went through, and the evidence that we presented from one end to the other of the link between Charles Taylor and the war in Sierra Leone is the absolute opposite of rubbish," he said.
He said while there may be inconsistencies amongst testimonies due to the circumstances under which witnesses survived, the testimonies, by and large, corroborated in substantial ways.
"Now Mr. Griffiths may be familiar with cases in London where police come in with a neatly-typed report and everything is detailed and on closed-circuit cameras, and there's a certain quality of evidence sometimes in those cases, but you get into a situation that I've dealt with in Sierra Leone, and before in Rwanda, in situations where thousands of people are murdered, where millions of people are displaced, where whole communities and institutions are torn apart, in societies that already suffer from underdevelopment, where witnesses don't wear watches, they don't tell time by calendars, and obviously there's going to be some inconsistencies in their testimony.
"That's maybe what he's talking about - that sometimes a person says it was three men and other they say it's four men.
But essentially their evidence, as we have said, is extremely compelling, and when you add it all up and look at all the ways in which it's corroborated and the network and the pattern that exists here, this is certainly in my experience at the international level, the most compelling case that I've ever seen - at least three times stronger than cases that I've seen presented in other international tribunals.
"But obviously it's going to be up to the Judges in terms of guilt or innocence and that'll follow the presentation of Mr. Taylor's own defence," he said.
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Abstracting from all nuances of the discipline of jurisprudence, your logic is broadly sound, but narrowly flawed: this is not a case of all or nothing. Personally, I think that the soupist Tejan Kabba should also be charged with crimes against humanity: his support of the so-called Kamajors, who engaged in the same genre of atrocities as the RUF and others, reasonably supports such an indictment. I agree that Taylor is not the only "Dr. Death." Kabba and other soupists in the criminal organization called the SLPP may be viewed as Doctors of Death too.
And,… [Read Full Text]
SELECTIVE PROSECUTION: NOW IN THE USA
The recent conviction of Taylor's son of "terrorism" in the US may be defensible on the evidence and legal presumptions and fictions supporting the same; however, is it reasonable to assume that the United States Authoritites CANNOT identify, charge and prosecute Sierra Leone soupists living in the US whose acts during the relevant historical period are precisely the same as those of Taylor's son?
A seasoned prosecutor may begin with the soupist rule of Siaka Stevens, Albert Margai, and similar oddities in the history of political terrorism.
Followers of the same, fairly categorizable… [Read Full Text]
Jallohlaw;
Just checking, I observed in your response to zotta's you mentioned "OTHERS" three times without an operant defination telling the readers who are the "OTHERS" You specifically identified Tejan Kabba, the Kamajors, RUF, APC, EBK and the SLPP. In Zotta's comment I think he wrote about ULIMO and LURD but you failed to mentioned either one.
Jalloh, ULIMO and LURD are synonym, many ponders may think that is the reason why their names were not mentioned. Instead, you referred to them as "OTHERS".
Please excuse the ambiguity or strategic evasion. Accordingly, ULIMO AND LURD, then, or ULIMO OR LURD, AND OTHER SOUPIST OCCUPIER entities in the occupied territories of Liberia and Sierra Leone.
I hope this is helpful.
I have not heard from soupists from COCORIOKO AND AWARENESS TIMES, and thanks to the stringent discursive-interactive rules of allafrica.com, I don't expect them to post here, SINCE THE SIERRA LEONE SOUPIST signature, THE MAMIE CUSS, is FUNDAMENTALLY, RIGIDLY AND DOGMATICALY VERBOTTEN HEREIN.
Cheers, my friend.
ONCE AGAIN ON SELECTIVE PROSECUTION.
The obscurantist, xenophobe John Leigh, a kamgbay krio, according to some, should also be in the dock with Taylor, along with Tejan Kabba. If Kabba is to be docked, as I have advocatged, so should John Leigh, the former soupist Ambassador of Sierra Leone to the USA during the criminal, soupist regime of Kabba.
He claims he was anti-RUF, AFRC, bla, bla, bla. I guess he was not anti-Kamajor. He supported the Kamajors, styling with the soupist Kabba.
Accordingly, since there is no difference in my historical and categorical memory between the… [Read Full Text]
LEMMAS OF SELECTIVE PROSECUTION
The theme of selective prosecution suggests the expansion of the discourse: vile traits of the cultural traditions of soupist occupied Sierra Leone.
1. Tribalism: The culture is suffocated by soupist whipped phony tribalism. Mendes v. Temnes, to name the main protagonists or, to the precise, proxies of the ideological interests of soupists.
For example, the soupist rag COCORIOKO is RIGHTLY experiencing a mass exodus of some Mendes and others because the toxic tribalist, obscurantist and Doctor of the mammy cuss, one Curtis Thomsas, now banned from publishing thereat his KKK and Nazi attacks… [Read Full Text]
PHONY WAR BETWEEN TWO PHONY SOUPIST MOUTHPIECES IN THE USA.
The "New People," an online mouthpiece for the soupist SLPP, and "Cocorioko", an online mouthpiece of the soupist APC are each engaged in editor bashing: The New People calls the editor of Cocorioko, one Kabs Kanu, an "APC Idioter," while the alleged Idioter riposts with " Ah fine pass dem," calling the soupists at the New People "scumbags."
In my opinion, these maroons, always circling in the boring alleged antagonism between Mendes and their allies and Temnes and their allies ARE ALL OF THE SAME ILK: proxies of… [Read Full Text]
Mr Rapp for your information, in a criminal case the defendent is guilty beyound all reasonable doubts. The defense team is not disputing the fact that wicked things didn't happened to civillians, but the Prosecution has not yet shown any hard fact directly likinig Taylor to atrocities in Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Army (SLA), ULIMO, LURD, and RUF they all had Liberian rebels fighting in Sierra Leone at some point. Those Liberian rebels that were hired by President Kabba (SLA) committed atrocities along with their Sierra Leone counterparts. A statement by Kabba when he testified in Sierra Leone at… [Read Full Text]