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April 22nd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
On Thursday the three judges presiding over the Special Court for Sierra Leone
in The Hague will deliver their long-awaited verdict.
Mr Taylor, 64, is charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against
humanity, including rape, terrorism, murder and using child soldiers. He
denies all charges, calling them “diabolical lies”.
Although he never set foot in Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war,
which killed over 50,000 people, he is accused of providing the rebel
factions with arms and cash in return for access to the country’s diamond
fields.
He will become the first ever head of state to have been indicted, tried and
had verdict pronounced on him in an international court.
“In the Nuremberg Trials after the Second World War, neither Hitler nor the
Emperor of Japan were ever brought to justice,” said Nicholas Koumjian, a
lawyer at the court. “Slobodan Milosevic, accused of war crimes in the
Balkans, died before his trial could finish. This is a historic moment.”
It will also be closely watched in London. Tony Blair’s decision to send in
troops, bringing about a rapid end to the war, is widely seen as a high
point in his interventionist foreign policy. His government agreed to house
Charles Taylor if he is convicted – making it likely that the former
president will end his days in a British high-security prison.
And there is certainly the sense that Thursday’s verdict will close a painful
chapter in Sierra Leonean history.
“We have been through so much trauma that the chance to bring someone to
justice is something we are all looking forward to,” said Solomon Berewa,
minister of justice at the time of Mr Taylor’s detention who sought the UN’s
assistance with trying him outside the country.
Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph from his home in Freetown, the
73-year-old lawyer said he was proud of the part he had played.
“If he is convicted, as we hope, there will be huge jubilation,” he said. “The
war which he sponsored caused huge havoc in this country. We will feel
justice has been done.”
Mr Taylor had been an influential and magnetic figure for many decades. Born
to a powerful family of Americo-Liberians – descended from freed slaves who
founded Liberia in the 19th Century – he studied in the US, picking up a
distinctive American twang.
“He is charismatic and articulate, and, unlike other accused in international
cases, he is so fluent in English he can sound just like an American
politician,” said Mr Koumjian, who took part in Taylor’s cross-examination.
“He is a master of manipulating people and had the ability to win
‘friendships’ with all kinds of people from Pat Robertson to Jesse Jackson,
who surely could not believe the charming man speaking to them was capable
of the kind of violence he has long been accused of.”
Mr Taylor worked in government procurement under a previous president, Samuel
Doe, before fleeing to America where he was eventually imprisoned for fraud.
Later he made his way to Libya, where under the tutelage of Colonel Gaddafi
he trained in guerrilla warfare and learnt how to launch a civil war.
In 1989 he returned to overthrow the Doe regime, launching the country into
bloody convulsions that killed 200,000 people, and becoming one of Africa’s
most notorious warlords. He was known as “Pappy” by a generation of drugged
child soldiers, who were led by self-appointed generals with names like
Peanut Butter, Bad Boy and Butt Naked.
Following a peace deal that ended the war, he was elected president in 1997,
terrorising the people into voting him with the unofficial slogan: “You
killed my ma, you killed my pa, but I will vote for you.”
A Ghanaian journalist who interviewed Mr Taylor at the time and mentioned the
macabre chants recalled him asking: “Have you heard them? They mean it, you
know, and they love me.”
He relished the role of president. A natural showman, he was equally at home
brandishing an AK47, sporting dazzling African tribal dress or in a
sharply-cut three piece suit.
When he faced accusations from the UN that he was a gun runner and diamond
smuggler, he addressed a mass prayer meeting clad head to toe in flowing,
Biblical white robes.
In 1997, he attended a now-infamous dinner party in South Africa, hosted by
Nelson Mandela. Among the guests were Naomi Campbell.
“When I was sleeping, I had a knock on my door, I opened and two men gave me a
pouch and said: ‘A gift for you’,” Miss Campbell told the court in August
2010, when she was reluctantly summoned to testify by the prosecution. “The
next morning, I opened the pouch… I saw a few stones in there, and they were
very small, dirty-looking stones.”
The prosecution claim that the “small dirty stones” were blood diamonds – gems
extracted from the ground and given to Mr Taylor by Sierra Leonean rebels in
exchange for funding and arms.
“He was a very charismatic man – one that could turn black into white,” said
Emmanuel Tommy, who worked at the time for the Red Cross in southern Sierra
Leone, on the border with Liberia.
“He is so dangerous because he could lead good people into trouble. From the
outset of the war we knew he was behind it – some of the displaced people
even said they were attacked by fighters speaking Liberian dialects.”
Married three times, his former wife Jewel – a feisty woman with a penchant
for bright clothes and plain speaking – divorced him when he left Liberia.
She is now a senator in the country. Mr Taylor remarried and his new wife
Victoria, who moved with him to The Netherlands, bore him a daughter in
February 2010. He is thought to have more than 15 children in total.
Mr Koumjian, the prosecution lawyer, added: “Many were naïve about what Taylor
was capable of, but I think in the end, Taylor was a victim of his own
arrogance. He overestimated what he could get away when he sent proxies to
invade Guinea and Ivory Coast, destabilising the entire region.”
Mr Taylor’s lawyer, Courtenay Griffiths QC, disagrees. He maintains that the
trial is politically motivated, and that there is little to prove that Mr
Taylor ordered or even knew what his allies were doing.
“The essence of the case against Taylor is that he funded and supported a
rebel group in a neighbouring country,” he said. “The US and other countries
have been doing that for years. The Contras committed atrocities in
Nicaragua and everybody knows they were supported by the CIA.
“Yet Taylor is being prosecuted for his foreign policy. And I think that sets
a very unwelcome precedent for weaker countries around the world.”
As part of the agreement with the UN, the Special Court in The Hague has
relayed events back to Sierra Leone via radio, print and online. But many
point out that, for all the well-meaning efforts to document and explain the
trial, so few people in Sierra Leone have access to internet that it makes
little difference.
While there have been improvements since the end of the civil war, most
citizens still face a daily struggle for survival: average life expectancy
is just 47 years, and the per capita GDP is $300 a year. Only a handful of
countries can be considered more impoverished.
Ade Daramy, president of the Sierra Leonean Diaspora Association, said the
country’s major towns were having their roads rehabilitated – often by
Chinese construction workers.
“That’s very visible,” he said. “But there’s a long way to go.
“For a lot of Sierra Leoneans, the fact that none of the money for this trial
has come from our coffers means that we can concentrate on the important
things; improving our hospitals, education, water supply, electricity, roads.
“There is a Sierra Leonean mindset that says if only the world out there would
open its eyes, it would see what there is. There is so much potential – not
diamonds and more, but iron ore, and human capital.
“We wouldn’t need aid. We just need assistance to build and develop our own
industries.”
And as Sierra Leone prepares for Thursday’s verdict, the psychological impact
of the conflict is yet again coming into focus.
“What many cannot comprehend is how fragile this region remains,” said Mr
Koumjian. “There are a lot of these ex fighters with little or no employment
opportunities, who must surely miss the days when they could do anything.
“The forced recruitment of young boys and especially girls into rebel
armies has left scars that will take generations to heal. These child
soldiers who killed or amputed or were simply victims of sexual slavery for
the rebel armies are now often ostracized or disowned from their communities
and even their own families.
“These girls who were ‘rebel wives’ and their children are now cut off
from the traditional support networks of extended family, village and tribe.
Many have turned to prostitution to survive. So the damage from these wars
will continue to cast a shadow on these societies for generations.”
Unisa Dizo-Conteh, remembering the three family members he lost in the
conflict, is steeling himself for the painful memories Thursday’s verdict
will bring back. His brother Morlai would have been 31 now, perhaps having
fulfilled his dream of becoming a lawyer. Mr Dizo-Conteh has named his
seven-year-old son after him.
“In my dreams we are playing together in the yard of our house,” he said. “We
were so close – we had a secret language and could talk to each other
without adults knowing.
“Sometimes in the mornings I wake up and I think he is alive. It still hurts
so much.
“We need some form of justice to get on with our lives.”
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