Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un2diamonds012208.html
UNITED NATIONS, January 22 -- Charles Taylor directed slave labor to mine diamonds in Sierra Leone and kept and sold more than one thousand diamonds, his prosecutor Charles Rapp told reporters on Tuesday. Inner City Press asked, what about holding those who bought the diamonds accountable? It has been reported that throughout the 1990s, the volume of diamonds purchased from Liberia was twenty-four times that nation's known output. Just where did the purchasers think the carats were coming from?
Rapp said such prosecutions are difficult, requiring a showing of "actual knowledge and affirmative acts." He pointed to the conviction for economic but not war crimes of Guus Kouwenhoven, who was Taylor's timber-man, controlling half of the hardwood in Liberia. Rapp said that on appeal, the Dutch prosecutors can put in more evidence and will. But apparently, the Special Court for Sierra Leone will not be indicting any corporations or corporate interests. For them, impunity continues.
Rapp says he will prove that in 1998, Taylor gave an order to "take and hold" diamond fields in Sierra Leone. He said it was unimportant whether the motive to start the war was diamonds, or if their importance only because known later. He said there are documents of a transfer of 1700 diamonds to Taylor, two to three hundred of which went into buying war materiel, the rest that Taylor kept for himself. For this, he said, Taylor can be charged with pillage. It would be a "challenge," Rapp said, to "locate his resources." In fact, Taylor's legal costs are being paid.
Rapp announced that Canada had earlier in the day pledged five million dollars to the Special Court. We'll see.
