Ex-Security Officer for Taylor Testifies

Images (showing 1 of 3 photos)

A one-time member of Charles Taylor's inner circle took the stand Wednesday to testify at the former Liberian president's war crimes trial, the first of dozens of witnesses prosecutors say will link Taylor to atrocities in Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war.

Varmuyan Sherif, 39, did not look across at Taylor as he entered the court in a traditional brown tunic and matching trousers. Sherif had served as a senior member of the security detail for Taylor and his family after Taylor became president in 1997.

Sherif waived his right to appear as a protected witness, which would have prevented public disclosure of his identity.

Early in his testimony, Sherif showed a map he said depicted supply routes leading from Liberia to rebels of the notoriously brutal Revolutionary United Front fighting for control of Sierra Leone's lucrative diamond fields.

Taylor, 59, is accused of orchestrating a terror campaign marked by murder, rape and mutilation by his Sierra Leone allies.

The first former African head of state to be tried by an international court, Taylor has pleaded innocent to all 11 charges.

Earlier Wednesday, defense lawyers completed their cross examination of a Sierra Leonean clergyman and teacher who had described in harrowing detail the massacre and decapitation of 101 men and the dismemberment of a child soldier.

On Tuesday, Alex Tamba Teh recounted watching young boys methodically hack off the hands and feet of another teenager, hearing the terrorized screams of women being raped, stepping over corpses too numerous to count and helping unload weapons for Sierra Leonean rebels off a Liberian helicopter.

Tamba Teh said he was among about 250 civilians captured by rebels in April 1998 in the diamond mining district of Kono.

Separated from women and children, the men were taken to a shelter near a mosque, where a rebel commander told the pastor to pray for his fellow captives and then mowed them down with a machine gun, he testified. Rocky later told another commander he killed 101 men.

"After he had killed the civilians ... he gave instructions that they be decapitated," Tamba Teh told the three-judge tribunal Tuesday.

A group of child soldiers known beheaded the corpses with machetes and cutlasses. Some were too small to lift the guns they were dragging around, Tamba Teh said.

Later, another boy Tamba Teh estimated was 16, was dragged to a log screaming and asking what he had done wrong. The other boys pinned down his arms and legs and hacked off his hands and feet, he said. After the mutilation, they grabbed the boy by the stumps and threw him into a toilet pit, he said.

Tamba Teh also testified that said he saw arms delivered to rebels by a Liberian helicopter and said a key RUF leader who took possession of the weapons identified Taylor as his "boss."

However, under cross examination, Tamba Teh conceded that he had not mentioned Taylor in previous statements to prosecutors and earlier said there were two Liberian helicopters, not one.

"It is the pressure," Tamba Teh said Wednesday, acknowledging he was traumatized by the harrowing events of 1998 and 1999. "My memory cannot serve me well."

Taylor's trial, adjourned in June after Taylor boycotted the proceedings and fired his lawyer, resumed Monday after a six-month recess.

The first witness, Canadian diamond expert Ian Smillie said Sierra Leonean rebels backed by Taylor used slave labor to dig up diamonds worth between $60 million and $125 million a year, and terrorized the population to assert their control of the fields.

Prosecutors allege that diamonds from Sierra Leone were smuggled through Liberia, and Taylor used the proceeds to buy arms and ammunition for the rebels — earning them the name "blood diamonds."

___

On the Net:

Special Court for Sierra Leone: http://www.sc-sl.org

Back To Top

	Taylor Attorney Calls Witness Unstable	Associated Press	Thu Jan 10	0
	War Crimes Trial Opens With Grisly Video	Associated Press	Mon Jan 7	0
	Taylor war crimes trial to resume	BBC News	Sun Jan 6	0
	Child soldiers dismembered boy, trial told	Australian Broadcasting Corporation	Tue Jan 8	0
	War crimes trial opens with grisly video	Yahoo! News	Tue Jan 8	2