At the trial of Kunti Kamara, the paramount importance of witnesses from Liberia

Testimonies follow one another at the Paris Assize Court. Friday, October 21, at 10e day of the trial of Kunti Kamara, a former Liberian rebel leader accused in particular of “acts of torture” and “complicity in crimes against humanity”, he is another “commander officer” of the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for the Democracy (Ulimo) who took the stand. Currently imprisoned in Switzerland, Alieu Kosiah is the first rebel leader convicted of crimes committed during Liberia’s first civil war (1989-1996). In June 2021, this man with a massive build and a strong voice was sentenced by Swiss justice to twenty years in prison for “inhuman treatment”, and for having ordered or directly participated in the death of 19 people, including 17 civilians. .

Ironically, it was statements by Alieu Kosiah to Swiss investigators that made it possible to find his friend Kunti Kamara, a refugee in the Netherlands, then in Belgium, and finally arrested in 2018 in Bobigny as he was preparing leaving by coach for Portugal under a false identity. This arrest in Seine-Saint-Denis earned him to be tried in the name of “universal jurisdiction”, which allows him to appear for serious crimes, wherever they were committed when the suspect is arrested on French territory. . “It was I who put him in trouble. I said ‘ask Kunti, he’s in Holland’”acknowledged Alieu Kosiah, 47, whose appeal trial is scheduled for early 2023.

Read also: “He showed a piece of his heart and ate it raw”: at the trial of Kunti Kamara, the dark hours of Liberia

Request for mutual legal assistance

At the origin of the trials of the two former comrades in arms of Ulimo, a complaint filed by Civitas Maxima, a Swiss non-governmental organization, whose objective is to fight against impunity for international crimes. “Providing evidence in these trials is very difficultrecalls Alain Werner, director of the organization. There is no political pressure but we come up against different kinds of problems, first of all because the facts are old. »

It took three attacks in the first half of 1993 for Ulimo rebels to expel from the northwestern town of Foya their enemies from the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), another rebel group led by Charles Taylor. Throughout Lofa County, they then made a reign of terror from July 1993 to the end of 1994. The facts with which Kunti Kamara is charged occurred “at a time when there were no mobile phones and therefore no boundaries allowing to provide, for example, proof that the accused was present at the scene of an abuseexplains Alain Werner. There are also no satellite photos of the area. »

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