CharlesTaylorTrial.org (The Hague)
Alpha Sesay
10 September 2009
Charles Taylor today said he did not order the the assassination of one of Sierra Leone's top rebel commanders during the country's civil war, and dismissed as "lies" allegations that he knew that Sierra Leonean rebels were recruiting fighters in Liberia in areas controlled by Mr. Taylor's own fighting force.
In a day of testimony focused on refuting prosecution witness testimony against him, Mr. Taylor told the Special Court for Sierra Leone "I did not order the killing of Sam Bockarie."
Mr. Taylor was responding to the testimony of the 37th Prosecution Witness, a Revolutionary United Front (RUF) insider and mining commander who testified under protective measures, using the pseudonym TFI-367. In his testimony from August 20 to September 1 2008, Witness TFI-367 explained that a relative of Sam Bockarie's wife had told him that Mr. Taylor ordered the assassination of the RUF commander and his entire family because Mr. Taylor was concerned that Mr. Bockarie knew too much about his involvement with the RUF. In order to protect such information, Mr. Bockarie and his entire family had to be killed.
In his response today, Mr. Taylor said that "it is the silliest thing that I have heard. What will Bockarie have to say about me? That I was giving arms to RUF? If this is true, he would have said so to Foday Sankoh when he returned from custody in 1999."
"What is there to hide that he would not have told his boss, that I will have to kill him for many years later?" Mr. Taylor asked.
Several prosecution witnesses have testified that when RUF leader Foday Sankoh was detained in Nigeria in 1997, he gave orders to Sam Bockarie that all diamonds mined on behalf of the RUF were to be handed over to Mr. Taylor for safe keeping. Witnesses also said that Mr. Sankoh told RUF commanders to take all orders from Mr. Taylor.
In his testimony today, Mr. Taylor questioned why Mr. Bockarie had not mentioned anything in his report to Mr. Sankoh about diamonds given to, or orders received from, Mr. Taylor after Mr. Sankoh's release in 1999.
"Except they were ungrateful people but he [Bockarie] would have told Sankoh. As a good commander on the ground, he is supposed to give a full report to his boss," Mr. Taylor said.
Mr. Taylor also refuted Witness TF1-367's testimony that RUF leader Foday Sankoh was recruiting fighters for the RUF in National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) controlled territories in Liberia and that Mr. Sankoh was making public pronouncements in Liberia about Mr. Taylor's support to the RUF. The witness claimed that he was personally recruited by Mr. Sankoh in Liberia and that he was trained alongside other RUF commanders like Issa Sesay and Morris Kallon at Camp Nama in Liberia. Mr. Taylor dismissed the witness' claims as lies.
"I have no knowledge of Sankoh's recruitment in Liberia. I was not even aware that Sankoh was in Liberia, not to talk about recruiting there. There is no way Sankoh would have been in Liberia in 1990 and speaking my name publicly there. I did not know that there was a Foday Sankoh training Sierra Leoneans at Camp Nama and planning to invade Sierra Leone," he said.
Also in his testimony today, Mr. Taylor made efforts to refute the testimony of the 42nd Prosecution Witness, Stephen Smith, an American professor who worked as a journalist in West Africa and has written extensively about issues in the region.
In his testimony on September 22 and 23 2008, Mr. Smith testified that the conflict in Sierra Leone was fuelled by the conflict in Liberia and that the same faces could be identified in Mr. Taylor's NPFL and Mr. Sankoh's RUF. "It felt like a regional war that was spreading out like a regional cancer," Mr. Smith said in his testimony in 2008.
Dismissing Mr. Smith's claims that the war was like a regional war, Mr. Taylor told the judges today that "I don't accept that at all. If we say so, then it should have gone to Guinea or Ivory Coast. Why didn't the war in Mozambique spur conflicts in other countries?"
Mr. Taylor dismissed Mr. Smith's work as a "one man workshop." Mr. Smith, he said "wrote a lot of nonsense across the African continent."
Mr. Taylor also said that Mr. Smith had traveled to Liberia at the start of the conflict in order to locate Americans who were in the country. He said that the NPFL had instructions from the United States to protect Mr. Smith, which the NPFL did. He said that Mr. Smith did not travel to Sierra Leone and that by the end of 1990 to early 1991, Mr. Smith was escorted out of Liberia by NPFL rebels through the Liberian border with Ivory Coast. The RUF, Mr. Taylor said invaded Sierra Leone in March 1991, by which time, he said, Mr. Smith was already out of the country.
"He got his facts all mixed up. I don't see how he could have spoken about something that had not happened. I mean, there was no war in Sierra Leone then," Mr. Taylor said.
Mr. Taylor dismissed Mr. Smith's entire report, saying that "It is very immature of him to speak in such loose terms. This is not a language of a journalist. This is a language of an intelligence analyst."
Mr. Taylor's testimony continues on Monday.
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Ttahs, I am now convinced that you have not been following the trial. You just repeat all the rumours you have heard over the years.
I'll appreciate a vivid point (s) on your posts on this site.Aki,you're not a specimen for me to transmit my posts on.I advise you to remain with your good memory pad of events and you can share such with your hommies...!
There's no piece of information unimportant.Mr.Smith's writtings might be a nonsense but it has gone in millions of minds around the globe.We await the outcome.
The truth will surely come to pass, the lord is watching over the evil doers.
Everything has an end, a time has come for those responsible to be head responsible for their actions.
In following this trial, at some point, I thought that Taylor was simply delusional. It’s turning out that he’s worse than that—he’s actually psychotic. First he denied the existence of his small boy unit (SBU), a group of children he recruited as fighters. Now he’s citing “peaceful” Guinea and Ivory Coast as evidence that he did not engulf the region in conflict. For many Liberians and other West Africans, Taylor’s testimony would be laughable; but we shouldn’t ignore that this man actually believes what he’s saying. This shows that he is truly psychotic. A psycho may claim that a voice in his head told him to murder people. This may sound absurd to many because no one else can hear the voice. It doesn’t mean, however, that the psycho does not absolutely believe in his phantom voice. Hey Charlie, your voice in your head told you and your gang to destroy our country and murder hundreds of thousands of our citizens and we witnessed that. Now your voice is telling you that there was no SBU, and that your chaos did not spread Guinea and Ivory Coast? Well guess what? We saw your SBU members on the streets of Liberia and we saw your chaos spread to Guinea and Ivory Coast. I guess the next thing you will deny is that your so-called Anti Terrorist Unit (ATU) ever existed, and that you had a son called “Chucky” who was terrorizing people in Monrovia.
Kartoe, I couldn't agree with you more. Taylor thinks people in the world don't have head on their shoulders. This muster has been lying from day one to his blind believers and now he thinks he can fool the rest of man kind. I'm just sorry that most of his supporter were not indicted too. But they better watch out because it is not over yet. We know them and at the appointed time we will pointed them out.
Did the war in Liberia not spread to Guinea and Ivory Coast? Guinea was very strong for Taylor to play around,so the Guinean Leader dealth with Taylor's nonsense the right way. We all know that in the Mano River Union,Guinea is more stronger intimes of military might.So for Liberia or Sierra Leone to confront them,it will take years or maybe a century of another.If anyone,disputes this fact,I suggest you take a try.
Sierra Leone was able to fall under and be allowed to be engulfed in the Charles Taylor war nonsense,due to the fact that the past Sierra Leonean Governments didn't set their priorities in seeing the need that the people of Sierra Leone were to be protected militarily.They didn't care,so they poorly financed the military.For God's sake,how could Three Officers use one riffle at a border checkpoint?
This even gave rise to the one time big bluff of the late President Samuel Doe to have acted insolently to the late President Siaka Stevens of Sierra Leone,by him Doe closing the border and boasting for a fight,as he was depending on the so-called weapons that he got from Romania at the time.These were weapons he decided using on one of Liberia's Town where the very Taylor launched his nasty rebel war from.
My advise to any Leader in Sierra Leone today is that,"in times of peace prepare for war and in times of war prepare for peace". We might even be as closed and sweetheart neighbours,never allow your friend to take you on a surprise.Always be prepared to notice or recognise a friend that is about to cover your face from your rear.
All we are going to hear from Taylor now, is "that is a lie,that is not true,this is absolute nonsense,this did not happen in Liberia so how could I permit or order such?".Where's Taylor's nortorious killer machine(Benjamin Yeaten)gone to? Did Dogoleay not suffer the same raw brutal torture from Taylor's men and later he denied of not ordering the torture that killed the late VP? Let's face the fact and forget the Lawyers' tricks.