PARIS —
France’s first trial of a participant in Liberia’s bloody civil wars began on
Monday, with former rebel commander Kunti Kamara facing charges of crimes
against humanity, including torture.
اضافة اعلان
The allegations
before the Paris criminal court against Kamara, 47, date back to 1993 and 1994,
early years in the back-to-back conflicts that would ultimately kill 250,000
people between 1989 and 2003.
The conflicts were
marked by mass murders, rape, and mutilations, in many cases by child soldiers
conscripted by warlords.
Atrocities against
civilians were common, with drugged fighters chopping off people’s limbs.
A truth and
reconciliation commission was set up in 2006 to probe crimes committed during
the war, but its recommendations, published in 2009, have remained largely
unimplemented in the name of keeping the peace.
And many warlords
who were incriminated are still considered heroes in their communities.
“Liberia is a
country where total impunity for these crimes still prevails,” said Sabrina
Delattre, a lawyer representing several Liberians and the Civitas Maxima aid
group, which is also a plaintiff in the case.
Killing, rape, and
looting
Kamara was a regional commander of the United Liberation Movement of
Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO), a rebel group that fought the National Patriotic
Front of ex-president
Charles Taylor.
According to
investigators, he headed an ULIMO faction in Lofa county, a strategic area in
northwest Liberia.
As well as
torture, he is also accused of involvement in “mass and systematic practices of
inhumane acts ... for both political and ethnic motives”, including killing,
gang rape, and looting.
Kamara, shaven
headed and with a black moustache, spoke to confirm his name to the court,
where he faces a maximum possible sentence of life in prison.
In a statement,
prosecutors laid out graphic details of Kamara’s alleged methods, including
killing a whistle-blower with an axe before eating his heart.
The charge sheet
also alleges that young women were raped and kept as sex slaves under Kamara’s
authority.
Kamara, who was
arrested near Paris in September 2018, denies the charges.
“He has
acknowledged that he was an ULIMO soldier but has always denied committing
atrocities against civilians,” his lawyer Marlyne Secci said.
Kamara is
“approaching this court case as someone who will be tried in a country that is
not his own,” she added.
The case was
brought by the crimes against humanity division of the Paris court, which was
set up in 2012 to try suspected perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against
humanity and genocide detained on French soil, irrespective of where their
alleged crimes were committed.
Set to last until
November 4, this is the first case taken by the unit that is not related to the
1994 Rwanda genocide.
“This trial is a
significant step for justice for victims of atrocities committed in Liberia’s
first civil war,” said Benedicte Jeannerod, director of Human Rights Watch in
France.
But she added that
further reforms were needed to allow French proceedings for more victims of
foreign atrocities.
Rare convictions
So far only a handful of people have been convicted in Liberia itself for
their part in the conflict, and efforts to establish a war crimes court in the
country have stalled.
Former Liberian
warlord-turned-president Taylor was imprisoned in 2012, but for war crimes
committed in neighboring
Sierra Leone, not in his own country, where he also
rampaged.
Other former participants
in the Liberian wars have been tried abroad in recent years.
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