MONROVIA — A second plaintiff has told the Swiss court hearing the appeal proceedings of Alieu Kosiah, the Liberian warlord challenging his 20-year sentence for war crimes, that Kosiah’s allies beat and intimidated him for testifying against Kosiah in 2021.

Kosiah, a 47-year-old former commander for the Ulimo rebel group, is appealing his conviction in the appeal chamber of Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court which convicted him of 21 of 25 counts including murder, rape, and use of a child soldier. Kosiah is facing fresh charges of crimes against humanity in this hearing and his sentence could be increased should the court find him guilty of them.

The plaintiff said this happened to him three months after he had testified against Kosiah when two men with a gun knocked and threw him to the ground. The plaintiff, a schoolteacher claimed the alleged attack and intimidation began after he had been removed from the payroll without explanation. He said though he got his job back, he had to be relocated.

He is the second witness in the appeal to claim he has faced retribution for testifying against Kosiah. An earlier witness told the court that a relative in Monrovia where he was staying had asked him to leave because he was “risking” her life and her “children’s life.” (To protect witnesses from retribution courts have ordered their identities to be concealed by the media.)

The plaintiff (plaintiffs are the victims who have brought the case against Kosiah) told the court in last week’s hearing that he was based in Lofa, where prosecutors say Kosiah committed his crimes in 1993 when Ulimo fought against the National Patriotic Front of Liberia led by then-warlord Charles Taylor.

“I was going to my garden in Zorzor, and I was attacked by four unknown men,” said the plaintiff according to a translated transcript of the trial taken by Civitas Maximas, the Swiss-based justice activists. “Two of them had an AK 47. One of them said, ‘It’s [the plaintiff’s name is withheld at the court’s direction], I know him’. The other said, ‘We were sent to kill him. So let’s kill him and let’s go.’ While they were arguing with each other they knocked me down and I could hear what they were saying.”

The plaintiff said they left him and fled when they heard the sound of a motorcycle. The plaintiff did not say who had allegedly sent the men to torture and kill him. “When I woke up, I spoke with the person on the motorbike who told me that she had seen people running away and I told her that she and God had just saved my life.”

“After this incident, I told [my boss] that I didn’t want to stay here. I was transferred to another position and had to be relocated. That’s the impact it had on me and my family.”

As he did in the trial stage of the case, Dimitri Gianoli, Kosiah’s lawyer, sought to cast doubt on the accuracy of the man’s testimony by asking why he did not complain to Liberian authorities at the time. “I don’t know them, so who am I going to mention in my complaint?” said the witness.

The plaintiff also accused Kosiah of compelling him to transport looted goods to the Liberia-Guinea border—”forced labor” is one of the counts Kosiah is challenging on appeal. The plaintiff alleged that Kosiah, wearing camouflage pants with a t-shirt, killed a boy who had disobeyed Kosiah’s order that he come out of a house to join Kosiah and other Ulimo rebels in a pickup truck. He said the boy feared he would be killed if he did so.

“Alieu Kosiah took his pistol to the side, and he shot the boy,” the plaintiff said. “The boy fell, and they left him there. They got back into the car.”

In his response Kosiah dismissed the allegations and questioned the witness’s credibility. “We don’t know the name of this young man,” said Kosiah. “How can we establish that what [the plaintiff] says is the truth? It all comes down to [plaintiff’s] credibility. For a person to be killed, he must first have existed.”

Kosiah repeated accusations that he and other alleged perpetrators tried for their roles in Liberia’s civil wars have made up: that the Liberian justice advocates Global Justice and Research Project (GJRP), which partners with Civitas Maxima, had bribed the witness to testify. Kosiah referred to GJRP as “the NGO”, the acronym for non-governmental organization.

“The only connection between [the plaintiff] and myself is the NGO,” Kosiah told the court. “If the NGO had not chosen me as a target, [the plaintiff] would never have known me in his life. [The plaintiff] knows only two people within ULIMO – Alieu Kosiah and “War Boss”. It’s impossible for someone living in Voinjama at the time not to know other people within Ulimo.”

The plaintiff also alleged that Kosiah used a boy as a child solider when he was in Lofa. Kosiah admitted to this charge in 2021 and had surprised the court by calling the former child soldier as his own defense witness to testify that Kosiah he was good to him. The ex-child soldier demanded asylum from Swiss authorities which was later refused. He was held in Switzerland to testify in Kosiah’s appeal but was removed from the court when he used the appearance to protest Swiss authorities’ handling of his asylum claim. He is expected to be deported to Liberia soon.

Another plaintiff alleged that Ulimo rebels captured and took her and other civilians to Kolahun, where one of the soldiers named Valy took her into a room and raped her. “When he took me by force, I started bleeding. I started crying,” said the witness. “He told me not to cry and said I was going to get used to it. I was covered in blood and he told me not to try to run away because if I tried he would kill me.”

She did not say whether Kosiah was present at the time but accused him of torturing and killing six men with military knives and guns. “They threw them into the well. They stretched their intestines and said it was a gate,” she said.

The witness corroborated the testimony of another plaintiff, who survived the alleged incident, was tortured by Kosiah and Kunti Kamara. The plaintiff, a former Ulimo solider, had testified in Kamara’s trial, showing his scarred back to the French court as evidence of injuries obtained at the hands of the commanders. He said he did not know whether Kosiah or Kamara had stabbed him during a tussle.

The female witness also accused Kosiah and other Ulimo soldiers, including Kamara, “Ugly Boy”, and “Fine Boy” of forcing civilians to eat human body parts.

“They were putting pieces of human beings in the wheelbarrows and rounding us up on the airfield,” she said. “They were forcing civilians to eat human flesh. They had a gun pointed at us. Maybe they did it too, but we had to.”

Kosiah has denied all the charges. The appeal continues next week.

This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of its West Africa Justice Reporting Project.

By Anthony Stephens with New Narratives

Lawyers for Kunti Kamara, a Liberian war criminal who was convicted by a French court last week for his role in the country’s first civil war, have appealed his landmark judgment. It is a decision that may see the entire case being re-litigated.

Last week the Paris Appeal Court found Kamara, 47, guilty of all 11 counts in his indictment of crimes against humanity, torture, and barbarism. In a unanimous decision, the nine-person jury agreed with Kamara’s victims and state prosecutors that he committed the crimes in 1993 when he served as a commander for the United Liberation Movement for Democracy (Ulimo). The jury sentenced him to life in prison, which in France equals thirty years after which he will likely be expelled from Europe. The judge in the trial told Kamara he had ten days to appeal the verdict.

Throughout the trial, Kamara repeatedly denied the charges, but did admit that he was a commander with Ulimo in Foya at the time and had 80 men under his command. In a phone call from Paris Marilyne Secci, Kamara’s lead lawyer, said the basis of the appeal was the defense’s claim that Kamara was given an unfair trial based only on testimony from witnesses remembering events from 29-years ago and with no forensic evidence.

“We don’t agree with this decision,” said Secci of the verdict. “I think there’s no proof. My client said he was just a soldier and with no prove and lifetime sentence. That’s why for me, the decision is not correct.”

Secci maintained Kamara was found guilty in the minds of the jury before the trial began.

“He was already looked like somebody guilty before his trial because when you arrive at the court and you are accused of crimes against humanity, everyone looks at you as a criminal, even if there’s nothing on the file for you,” said Secci.

Secci defended Kamara’s slamming of witnesses as “criminals” and liars. She claimed that Kamara did not tell the trial that Ulimo committed no war crimes—a comment that was a major twist in the over three-week legal proceedings.

“Anything he said was used against him. He never said that Ulimo didn’t do anything in Foya, Lofa county. He said he didn’t see anything,”.

On appeal, a new court and a jury will hear the case in accordance with French law. It’s unclear when the appeal will take place. Under French law Kamara has the right to request his release until the appeal.

Sabrina Delattre, lawyer for the civil parties, said she was unmoved by Kamara’s appeal.

“It’s Kamara’s right to appeal,” said Delattre. “It’s just how it works in the French system. And for the victims, I know it can be a bit difficult to understand, but we will see how it goes.”

Delattre defended the credibility of her clients.

“The victims and the witnesses were heard and believed. Their testimonies were deemed valuable and were considered authentic. So, I do not see the contrary happening for the appeal.”

This story is a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project.

By Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh with New Narratives

NGISAKONJA, Lofa County – Evelyn Pillo points to the spot where her father’s house once sat. It was here that her family endured the horrors that, she says, haunt them to this day. In 1993 when troops with the United Liberia Movement of Liberia (Ulimo) took control of this area for four months Pillo says they set her father’s house ablaze and murdered her youngest brother Augustine.

After they killed him, Pillo says, they cut off parts of his flesh, roasted it and ate it.

After a nearly four-week trial in the Paris Court of Appeal Kamara was found guilty of torture, barbarism and complicity crimes against humanity this week and was sentenced to life in prison. Kunti’s victims in Foya say the French court’s ruling is long overdue justice served.

“That Co Kundi man let him be killed!”

“That Co Kundi man, let him be killed!” Pillo says shaking with rage and using the war name by which most people knew the Ulimo commander in this district at the time. “But before killing him, let him suffer the same way he suffered my brother. They threw him in the fire, and while he was trying to run out, then they shot him again, threw him back into the fire, and then cut his flesh and ate him.”

Pillo, like many other victims here, says Kamara’s trial brought back fresh memories of the months Ulimo wreaked havoc this area bordering Guinea and Sierra Leone, dominated by people of the Kissi ethnic group. They were battling with the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, led by Charles Taylor, for control of areas in that north, western and central parts of the country. Kamara was an infamous frontline commander for Ulimo which Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission found committed the fifth highest number of atrocities among the 22,000 testimonies it heard.  

After the end of the Liberian civil wars, Kamara, now 47, claimed asylum in the Netherlands and was eventually given Dutch citizenship. When Swiss authorities arrested Kamara’s former colleague Alieu Kosiah in 2014, Dutch authorities began building their own file on Kamara. Sensing the threat Kamara moved to France in 2016. French authorities caught up with him in 2018 when he was arrested.

Since Kamara’s trial began in Paris dozens of Liberian witnesses including nine plaintiffs in the case, have traveled from here to Paris to testify about allegations of rape, murder, cannibalism and torture of civilians.

Kamara has denied all the accusations victims calling the plaintiffs “criminals” and liars. He admitted he was in Ulimo during that period but insisted he only operated on the frontlines and never saw any atrocities committed by Ulimo in Foya.

They are the criminals. I am not a criminal. I can’t fool you, people,” making the unsubstantiated allegation that a network led by Global Justice and Research Project, a Liberian justice organization, had conspired against him. “All these people that are coming, you can see the network. When they are talking, they are giving information to each other.”

Theresa Gbotoe, another victim, broke down in tears as she told how she and her husband were among civilians here who were forced to march to the infamous “Vienna base” in the village of Sodu. Witnesses told FPA/New Narratives Vienna Base was considered a place of “No Mercy” where Co. Kundi executed people he perceived as enemies.

Gbotoe, a registered nurse, says her husband Saah Alex Ngiviay had been severely beaten by General Fayiah, the NPFL commander, while hiding in the bush. Kamara saw the marks from the beating as a sign her husband was an NPFL rebel. Kamara ordered her husband beheaded, Gbotoe says, and his head placed on a stick. Gbotoe says she was made to keep watch over the head and everyone passing was made to salute the dead man’s head.

In Foya other witnesses told how Kamara allegedly killed a middle-aged woman who was accused of witchcraft. He shot her in the head four times with his gun telling her to “practice witchcraft no more”.

In other accounts, survivors and victims’ families told FrontPage Africa/New Narratives how Kamara subjected civilians to forced labor. They were made to carry looted goods from Foya and nearby towns and villages across to Guinea under Kamara’s orders often without food or water. Refusal by anyone to carry goods would mean death according to old man Marcus Fayiah in Gbandu Kenema.

“Co Kundi and his boys used to go from house to house, collecting people and putting them in jail at the night,” Fayiah said. “When they put us in jail, the things they had looted, the oil and coco from those villages, early in the morning they will put them on our heads and take us to go Soduma. And when you reach Soduma, then they will leave us there, go across to Guinea and sell their things.”

Carrying the looted goods from Foya to Soduma was not the end. When Kunti and his men had completed their business transactions in Guinea, they would purchase salt, sugar, and other items and have those captives move them into their operating base back in Foya.

Fayiah described it as a “do or die mission”. Walking along bush paths, carrying heavy loads, the captives were easy pickings for rival NPFL rebels which attacked regularly.

“If you say you are tired, they will kill you,” Fayiah says. “And take those things you were carrying and divide them among the others.”

Though victims in Foya were pleased to see justice finally done many did not agree with the 30-year sentence given to Kamara who will be 77 when he is released and expelled from Europe. Most wanted him to receive the death penalty. Capital punishment has been banned in all European countries. Thirty years imprisonment is the largest sentence a French court can give. 

Two former commissioners of Liberia’s TRC – Massa Washington and John Stewart – testified in Kamara’s trial. In an interview on his return from Paris Stewart said the trial was important for Liberia’s victims.

“The war has ended but people are still grieving, their hearts are still grieving for the loss of their loved ones whose lives were taken away by perpetrators of violence,” said Stewart in an interview in Monrovia upon his return from Paris. “Since the war ended, nothing has happened to any of those perpetrators and many of them have left the country and living in other countries such as Kunti Kamara. For victims, the trial represents hope and it affirms that we all belong to the same humanity and atrocities committed against humankind in Liberia can be atrocities committed against humankind everywhere.”   

Kamara is the fourth Liberian held to account for his or her crimes in Liberia’s civil wars and the third Ulimo member. Alieu Kosiah, another former Ulimo commander was sentenced to 20 years in a Swiss court last year. His appeal will be heard in January. Two more Liberians – Mohammed Jabateh of Ulimo and Tom Woewiyu of the NPFL – were found guilty of criminal immigration fraud by a US court in 2017 and 2018 for lying about their war crimes. Jabateh is serving 30 years. Woewiyu died of Covid while awaiting sentencing. Chuckie Taylor is serving a 97-year sentence for the torture he committed in Liberia but the American born son of Charles Taylor was tried as a US citizen.  

Sierra Leonean Gibril Massaquoi was acquitted of charges he committed war crimes in Liberia by a Finnish court last year. That acquittal is also being appealed. Kamara, Kosiah and Massaquoi were prosecuted under the legal principal of “universal jurisdiction”, which allows countries to prosecute individuals for war crimes or crimes against humanity, regardless of where they occurred. The US does not have similar universal jurisdiction laws.

There are many more trials to come. During the Kamara trial a French investigator revealed that a second Liberian is under investigation there. Martina Johnson, formerly of the NPFL, is awaiting trial in Belgium. Two more Liberians in the UK and two in the US are awaiting trial.

The push for a Liberian war crimes court got a big push last month when Beth Van Schaack, the US Global Ambassador for War Crimes, visited Liberia demanding the government address war time accountability. The ambassador also promised the US would pay for the court. The costs of the court, likely to run to hundreds of millions of dollars, had been a big obstacle.

The only obstacle to a court now appears to be political will. Presidents Johnson Sirleaf and Weah both blocked the court out of fear of the political backlash that would come with indicted powerful political leaders such as Prince Johnson, senator for Nimba County, former rebel leader and top of the TRC’s worst perpetrators’ list.

This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia Project. Funding was provided by the US Embassy in Liberia. The funder had no say in the story’s content.

PARIS, France—Prosecutors in the war crimes trial of Kunti Kamara, an accused Liberian warlord have asked the French jury hearing his case to find him guilty of all the charges he’s accused of, but his defense claims he’s innocent and has not been accorded a fair trial.

By Anthony Stephens with New Narratives

Mr. Kamara, 47, is accused of crimes against humanity and torture, including cannibalism, forced labor, murder and complicity in rapes. He’s accused of committing the crimes as a commander for the United Liberation Movement for Democracy (Ulimo)—charges he denies—attacking the credibility of witnesses, known as civil parties, who have brought the charges against him. Kamara admits he was in Foya, an area in northern Liberia, where all the crimes were allegedly committed for four months. But he insists to the nine-jury panel that he spent a large part of his time there on the frontlines. The jury comprises three judges and six ordinary French citizens. Unlike in Liberia and other common law jurisdictions like the US and the UK, which require a unanimous jury verdict, the French legal system requires a simple majority jury decision, which means only five of the nine must agree to find Kamara guilty of his charges. If found guilty, Kamara faces 30 years in jail—the maximum under French law. Legal analysts say his acquittal could be a blow to the civil parries and prosecution who have come under attack from his supporters for his prosecution.

Knowing what’s at stake, state prosecutors seized the moment on Monday to de defined every element of his charges in their final argument and justify to the jury why they should adjudge him guilty.

“It’s your responsibility to sentence Mr. Kamara for all the crimes he did,” said Aurelie Belliot, a prosecutor in the case. “France should not be the last hiding place for war criminals. So, I am asking you to sentence Mr. Kunti Kamara to life imprisonment,”.

Although Kamara initially admitted in the trial that he had 80 men under his command, he claimed last week that he was a “floating officer”. But Belloit said she finds his argument to be inaccurate, because he also told the court last week that he held the ranks of colonel and captain in Ulimo. Belliot insists Kamara was aware of the alleged crimes by his men, including rapes of women by one of his dreadful soldiers, “Babylon”.

“This constitutes aiding and abetting this crime,” she said. As a superior he should have stopped this crime, but never did. Kunti Kamara is still telling the court that he’s the only one that never saw anything. The fact that he’s saying he never saw anything, does not give credibility to his defense,”.

Kamara is being prosecuted under the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows the prosecution of individuals accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, regardless of where they took place. It’s the same legal doctrine Swiss authorities successfully used to prosecute Alieu Kosiah, another former Ulimo commander for war crimes in June 2021. But appeal proceedings against his 20-year sentence are set for January 2023. But critics have criticized Kamara’s prosecution in France, arguing that the jury has never been to Liberia and does not understand the context of the Liberian civil wars. But justice advocates, including Massa Washington, an ex-commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission backed the trial.

The prosecutors used a large part of their argument to also defend the trial and the legal principle.

“You should take into consideration the suffering of the Liberian people. Every person in Liberia is saying that this hearing is a light of hope,” said Claire Thouault, the other prosecutor in the case.

Just like in other war crimes trials that we’ve covered, inconsistences of witness testimonies have dogged this trial—a major line of argument by the defense. Kamara himself has accused the witnesses of lying about him.

But Thouault defends the witnesses.

“The issue that civil parties could not remember dates was not a memory issues, but a cultural issue,” she said. “During the civil war, there were no death certificates. There was no one to establish the cause of death. It was devastating! Testimonies are the central evidence.  Many trials like Rdanwa and other places, many testimonies were about the victims. Testimonies were about events,”.

But Kamara’s lawyers disagree.

“Maybe the people are speaking together. Maybe these are the plot theories he’s talking about,” said Marilyne Secci, lead defense lawyer. “They didn’t recognize him. The first time they recognized him was only in court. A witness who claimed to have been on the scene cannot call the names of two of three people there,”.

Secci also challenged the credibility and reliability of the evidence of the prosecution and civil parties.

“No picture about the facts. No picture about Mr. Kamara at the time. No bodies. You cannot provide evidence or claim with no body,” she said. “I cannot accept those accusations. The crimes are serious. Mr. Kamara runs the risk to spend his whole life in prison,”.

Seccis also claimed that her client has been unjustly treated.

“My client didn’t have a fair hearing in this case,” she said. “Because the French justice that wants to carry out fair justice but didn’t have the means. This criminal case was just carried out like an ordinary case. My colleague and had to share the legal wages. The defense didn’t have a means in this trial to present a proper defense,”.

Tarek Koraitem, the other defense lawyer pleaded with the jury to acquit his client.

“Your decision is very vital. You have to do it with justice,” said Koraitem. And you have to do in in line with the French penal code. You are not Liberians to carry vengeance against a Liberian,” he said.

The jury will hand down its verdict on Wednesday, but Kamara will make his final defense before they retire to their deliberation room and then emerge to announce their much-anticipated ruling. Court’s President, Thierry Fusina told Kamara about the importance of his statement.

“By law, you are the last person to think well, said Fusina. “So, take time to think well. You are going to have a day to be able to think and to be able to tell the court what you want,”.

This story is a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project.

By Massa Washington, commissioner of Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission for New Narratives

PARIS, France – The trial of former Ulimo battalion commander, Kunti Kamara aka “Kunti K.” ends its third week. Kamara is being tried for crimes against humanity, torture, forced labor and acts of barbarism, in the town of Foya in Lofa Country, Western Liberia, where the accused has admitted he was stationed for four months in 1993. More than a dozen Liberian witnesses appearing before the panel of three judges and 6 jurors have recounted terrifying stories of how Kunti K. and fellow Ulimo commanders, allegedly forced the civilian population under harsh conditions to trek hundreds of miles to and from the Guinean border with looted items including dismantled parts of an electric plant, cars, motorbike engines and household items. The “forced marches” as they are referred to by the court, often happened without food, water or rest stops and those expressing or exhibiting exhaustion were flogged or killed for slowing down.

The trial has heard testimonies from victims as well as secondary witnesses of rape, gang-rape, looting, arson, murder, mass murder and cannibalism, all allegedly meted out against the population of Foya. The accused has denied all the allegations. He has admitted being a battalion commander of Ulimo but said his activities were limited to “the battlefront”. Kunti has also acknowledged knowing, and in some instances, interacting with Ulimo fighters whose names featured prominently in these proceedings. Among them are “Ugly Boy”, “Fine Boy”, “Deku”, Alieu Kosiah and Mohammed Dumbuyan, all of whom witnesses have cited as being responsible for allegedly committing some of the most horrifying crimes. Kunti said he reported to his commanders: Deku and Mohammed Dumbuyan.

I have had a front row seat at this trial as I have at trials of Mohammed Jabateh and Thomas Woewiyu in my adopted city of Philadelphia, USA. On some occasions, as in this one, I am called on to testify about my role as a journalist during the first civil war where I witnessed suffering that still haunts me. I am also called to testify about my role as one of nine commissioners on the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission which heard the wrenching testimonies of 22,000 survivors of this brutal and depraved war. The questions I am asked by lawyers, journalists and court watchers in every case are: why is this trial happening here in Paris with French judges and juries or in Philadelphia with American judges and juries? Why is it not taking place at home in Liberia? And how do Liberians feel about these trials taking place so far away?

This is what I tell them:

This is what I tell them:

It has been 19 years since the end of the Liberian civil war and the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) that paved the way for peace. As part of ensuring post war stability, promotion of peace, national unity and reconstruction the CPA called for the creation of institutions including a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that would investigate what happened in Liberia. The TRC would be tasked with advancing recommendations that would address accountability, peace and reconciliation. It has been 13 years since the end of the work of the TRC and submission of its final report with recommendations for how to move the country forward. Key amongst the recommendations was the establishment of a War Crimes Court to hold accountable those bearing the greatest responsibility for the gross human rights violations committed during the war. To date, nobody in Liberia has been held accountable for major crimes committed during in the war. There have been two democratically elected governments since then and neither has mustered the courage or the political will to implement the TRC recommendations.

For now this justice is all they have.

Massa Washington, TRC Commissioner

As we all know, some of those named in the TRC’s Final Report -including major warlords – are in government, holding high profile public offices including in the House of Representatives and the Senate. These warlords and their cohorts also have economic strength since their political positions afford them the opportunity to amass wealth at the expense of their victims whom they now rule. They are some of the richest Liberians today.

This situation creates a precarious position for the creation of the war crimes court. Despite resounding calls for accountability from broad-based Liberians and members of the international community, the legislature, which has received two bills to create a court, has sat on its hands. In January 2018 eighty regional national and international civil society groups issued an open letter calling upon President George Weah to implement the TRC recommendations and establish the war crimes court. Later that year the United Nations Human Rights Committee also called on the Government of Liberia to establish a process to bring about accountability for past war crimes. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States Congress passed a resolution affirming its support for the full implementation of the TRC recommendations and called upon the Government of Liberia to establish the war crimes court. Unfortunately, all such calls have been ignored. The Government of Liberia has provided zero inclination that the war crimes court will happen. The entrenched culture of impunity in Liberia, lack of political will and courage on the part of the current Liberian Government means hope by the Liberian people for wartime accountability remains elusive.

Kunti K. is the second person being tried directly for crimes allegedly committed in Liberia. The first to answer for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Liberia was Alieu Kosiah, also a former Ulimo commander, who was arrested, tried, convicted by a Swiss court, and sentenced to 20 years. Kosiah is appealing his conviction. Jabateh aka “Jungle Jabbah” and Thomas Woewiyu, former Defense Minister of the NPFL of Charles Taylor, accused of committing similar crimes, were instead convicted for lying about their war time activities on their immigration forms to gain legal status in the United States.

For now all the victims of the conflict can do is utilize international instruments to seek justice outside of Liberia. Liberia is a member of the United Nations and signed the UN Human Rights Declaration and other global human rights charters. The current Kunti K. trial is being held under the legal principle of “universal jurisdiction” which states that crimes committed against all of humanity know no borders and can be tried anywhere in the world. For victims who continue to wait, hoping for justice, these trials represent their best hope for any iota of justice.

For such Liberians, these trials serve as validation of the pain and suffering at the hands of their abusers.

Finally alleged perpetrators who once saw themselves as being invincible and untouchable are held accountable in a court of law. The trials says that Liberians have not been forgotten by the rest of the world. Once powerless, depressed and hopeless victims of the war are being resuscitated with hope that justice can occur even if it is outside of Liberia and adjudicated by strangers. For now this justice is all they have.

This commentary was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West African Justice Reporting Project.

PARIS, France – The judge in the ongoing war crimes trial of Kunti Kamara abruptly adjourned the hearing on Tuesday after an inconsolable witness began a graphic description of her alleged rape by a soldier under Kamara’s command.  It was an emotional day of testimony that saw two witnesses break down in tears as they described the alleged crimes of the former commander of the United Liberation Movement for Democracy (Ulimo) including rapes by Kamara’s soldiers and murder.

Report by Anthony Stephens, with New Narratives

Tuesday’s first witness told the three judges and six jurors who are hearing the case that her alleged rapist was known as “Babylon”. She and other witnesses said the Ulimo rebel was notorious for rape and torture. She said Kamara was present when Babylon grabbed her.

“That night, he tied me,” the witness said. “He opened my legs and put salt in my vagina. He took up the knife and rubbed the salt…..,” the woman fell to her knees in tears.

A staff of the court gave her a chair to sit on while she composed herself. But it was not enough. As the witness stood to resume her testimony, she struggled for balance and with a trembling voice, cried out about the crime that she said changed her life 29 years ago.

“I am damaged! My people, I am damaged,” the witness said, swaying as she cried.

This prompted the court’s President, Thierry Fusina to immediately halt proceedings. After convening meetings of lawyers, jurors and court staff he announced the court would delay the testimony.

“The lady is in a state of shock,” said Fusina. “She’s grieving. So, we will give her more time. We will hear from her tomorrow morning.”

Outside the courtroom, the witness sat on a bench, surrounded by her lawyer, Sabrina Delattre and other witnesses, who comforted her. Minutes later, first aiders assigned to the Palais de Justice came to assess her condition. She was allowed to rest before leaving the court.

The court has asked the media to withhold the names of the witnesses for fear of retribution. Kamara faces numerous charges, including complicity in crimes against humanity—charges he’s repeatedly denied.

The witness was not the only one to tell the court about Babylon’s alleged cruelty.

“Babylon and his bodyguards used human intestines and heads at the gates,” another witness said, corroborating the testimonies of other witnesses in the trial about alleged acts of barbarism by the Ulimo soldiers under Kamara’s watch.

The witness also told the court that she was just nine years old at the time. Kamara was present when two of his bodyguards allegedly gang raped her “repeatedly” in Foya, Lofa county in 1993.

She said before the rapes she had considered Kamara a father figure and claimed that he gave her the nickname “Black Diamond,” because of her dark complexion. But she said she was helpless when the former Ulimo commander allegedly encouraged the act by his silence.

“He was on the porch when the two boys carried me inside,” the witness told the court in a trembling voice. “He was the commander for them. I thought he could stop them. I remained crying, he didn’t talk. He laughed and started speaking his dialect.”

“The thing was repeated. Any time they ready, they did it,” said the witness, now 38, and then broke down in tears, wiping her face with a handkerchief. She said the rebels beat her with guns.

Just as it’s done to other witnesses in this trial, the defense questioned the accuracy of the witness’s testimony.

“He was the commander at the time. When somebody gives order to you and said ‘Do this’, you will go and do it,” she said in answer to questions by lead defense lawyer, Marilyne Secci. The witness also claimed that Kamara and another soldier of his beheaded a man. She also accused Kamara of killing her father by pouring boiling water down his throat.

“He was fasting for seven days,” said the first witness’s sister who also testified. “The very day he was to end the fast was the day they put the water it into his mouth. Ugly Boy and others did it. I was begging him to leave my father, but he said no. He poured the boiled water and killed my pa.”

Earlier in the day, the defense argued that Kamara’s charges of forced labor and torture should be dismissed because, they claimed, there was a 10-year statute of limitation by French law.

“No plaintiff has filed a complaint between 2003 and 2013,” said Tarek Koraitem, one of Kamara’s lawyers referencing the year – 2003 – when those became crimes in French law. “That’s why I have considered the acts of torture and barbarism fall under the status of limitation.”

But the prosecution questioned why the defense had raised this argument so late in the trial. The implication was that the defense team was underprepared and were grasping for last minute reprieves.

“I am surprised that this argument comes only during the third week of this trial,” said Aurelie Belliot a prosecuting lawyer. “As part of the proceedings of the issue of status of limitation was analyzed and decided prior to the opening of the trial.”

The court will decide the motion on Wednesday when the trial continues.

This story is a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project.

PARIS, France – The former Ulimo commander Kunti Kamara, on trial here for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Liberia’s civil wars, had his first chance to make a substantive response to the allegations made against him in the first five days of this trial.

Under questioning from the judges, civilian lawyers and prosecution lawyers Kamara denied all the accusations that victims have made against him of torture, rape, murder of civilians and “barbarism” in the town of Foya in Lofa County, Liberia between 1993 and 1994.

Kamara told the nine-person jury and four alternates that the accusations of cannibalism – that he roasted and ate the heart of a civilian who had allegedly reported his crimes to international observers – made him sick.

“Since I was arrested nothing bothered me in the trial like what they’re talking about now. Eating human beings,” Kamara said. “Even if I spend 100 years in jail I will not admit to eating a human being’s heart. Each time I hear it I want to vomit.”

“Since I was born until today I never eat pork,” said Kamara a Muslim. “Why should I eat human being heart? I have nothing to say. I am innocent. I don’t know them today. I don’t know them tomorrow.”

Kamara denied that he had ever knew anyone who had said they ate human heart including in rituals of the Poro, a traditional African society.

“Since I was small that is a rumor in the ear,” he said of Poro human sacrifice and consumption of human flesh. “But I never met anyone who said they ate heart.”

Kamara insisted that the Ulimo committed no atrocities against civilians in the four-month period he was with them in Foya though he conceded Ulimo may have committed atrocities elsewhere during the war.

He said Ulimo in Foya was under the ultimate command of Ulimo Commander Dekau. Kamara said his mandate was only as battalion commander in charge of platoons “on the frontlines”. He denied any leadership role in the town over civilians.

Kamara acknowledged Ulimo fighters that victims have identified in this trial “Ugly Boy”, “Fine Boy” and Alieu Kosiah, convicted of war crimes in Switzerland in 2021, were all with him in Foya but Kamara claimed he hardly ever saw them.

Kamara blamed the accusations that have brought him to trial here were part of a “plot” orchestrated by “a clique” led by Fayah Williams, the late deputy director at Global Justice and Research Project, the Liberian justice activists.

Late in the evening Massa Washington, the former commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, gave a powerful testimony that could prove decisive in the trial.

It was designed to answer questions that jurors may have had about whether they should be passing judgement on a Liberian for crimes committed 30 years ago in a country a long way away. That was a question French journalists were asking eachother on the sidelines of the trial.

“These trials are important because they give them people of Liberia justice,” an emotional Washington told the jury. “They give us hope that one day we’ll be able to get justice with our own judges, our own prosecutors, on our own soil. In the meantime we are grateful that some of the people who committed these gross violations of human rights who are in this country, in the US, in every country in the world where they find them they can try to bring them to justice. In the absence of our government addressing accountability these trials are the Liberian people have.”

Washington thanked the jury.

“It sends a message that we belong to the universal human race,” Washington said. “It says that the world has not forgotten Liberia. It says that we all share that common human dignity. We have the same needs. We feel the same pain. We thank you for the opportunity to tell some of these stories. I hope this has provided an important clarification for why this trial is important.”

Washington told some of the horrors she had personally witnessed as a journalist in Monrovia during the first civil war. The jury was riveted by her testimony which made clear that the testimony they were hearing from witnesses here was just a fraction of the myriad atrocities that had been committed during the war. She told of rapes of girls as young as five and of elderly women. She said her work with women made it clear to her than many of the elderly women had not come forward to the TRC hearings because of the stigma.

She told the story of an 82-year-old woman who told her she was made a war wife.

“’I was raped all the time by boys who could have been my grandchildren,’” Massa quoted the woman as saying. “Her story is just one story that represents thousands of stories. The rebels were so bad that when people were on checkpoints trying to get away from the fighting the rebels were raping the wives in front of the husbands. They even forced sons to have sex with mothers in front of the family to destroy the men. They took the young girls away.”

Earlier in the day the fifth victim to testify against Kamara detailed the alleged torture, killing and cannibalism of a schoolteacher in Foya that all victims have claimed was directed by the defendant.

He also talked more broadly of the suffering of people in Lofa during Ulimo’s occupation of the town. His telling of the experience of the women he had planned to marry was a harrowing example of the broader suffering of the people.

“M. was my girlfriend and Ugly Boy took her as a sex slave,” the victim told the Paris court talking of the now deceased perpetrator that many victims have alleged was Kamara’s lieutenant who followed his orders to commit many of the crimes. The court has ordered press to withhold victims’ names for their security.

“This was another blow to me,” the victim told the court. ”I really planned to marry her. The first time I saw her after the war, it was painful, but it had happened. She was not at fault. I saw her but the stigma was too heavy. I could no longer take her as a wife. By tradition anyone who takes a wife after that is easily rejected from society. In addition, because of her time as a sex slave, she conceived. I am feeling it for her now because her situation is too deplorable.”

The trial continues Tuesday with more testimonies from victims about the murder of a woman in Lofa.

This story is a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project. 

PARIS, France – The trial of Kunti Kamara for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Paris took a dramatic turn late Friday as the presiding judge in the trial asked a witness if the man he had described committing multiple atrocities, including killing four members of his family, was in the court.

“Yes,” said the victim turning to look directly at Kamara who was in a protective glass box.  “That is him.”

The victim was standing less than 10 feet from Kamara who was also asked to stand. Neither man betrayed what must have been deep turmoil at, what the victim alleges, is their first meeting since 1993 in very different circumstances.

The last time they met in Foya, Lofa County, Kamara had the power to take his life at any minute according to the victim, just as he had taken the victim’s brother’s life by shooting him in the head while he was standing next to him. And his sister’s life when he ordered her baby torn from her back before she was slashed to death. 

Judge Thierry Fusina, the Court President, asked the victim if he was sure Kamara, now 48, was the man responsible five times.

The victim did not waiver. “No doubt whatsoever that is him,” he said.

Kamara, who was not allowed to respond, looked straight at his accuser with an expression of bemusement, seemingly unable to comprehend the gravity of the moment.

Sabrina Delattre, lawyer for the civil parties representing the victims at the trial, asked the victim if he had anything to say to Kamara.

“Kunti, for whatever you did in Foya, this is the time for justice in order for the minds of people to rest,” the victim said in a calm, clear voice.

The moment was a poignant one for justice activists and journalists who have covered the four trials of Liberians and a Sierra Leonean on charges related to the Liberian wars, including John Stewart, the former Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner who was in the court. It was the first time that a victim was given the chance to address the accused perpetrator directly.

Outside the court the victim said he felt tremendous relief. He said he had been given notice that he might have the chance to address Kamara directly and prepared his statement with the four members of his family and many others killed and maimed in his community in mind.

In another riveting moment Kamara was given a chance to respond to the allegations that had been made by four alleged victims throughout the day. The Paris Court, in the latest of a long list of unusual protocols that has surprised court watchers, will invite Kamara to respond at the end of each day that includes his accusers.

Kamara has admitted that he was a member of Ulimo previously but today he conceded that he had been in Lofa during the events described by the victim and had been one of the Ulimo rebels who searched for the Lofa chief Tamba Taylor who, he claimed, was hiding in the bush with an NPFL commander named General Fayiah and 500 civilians the general was using as a “human shield”. Kamara denied the victim’s accusation that he was in charge.

“I was one of the group that brought him to Foya but I was not the one who was responsible,” Kamara said.

Earlier in the day a woman and her daughter described the murder of her husband, a schoolteacher, allegedly by a Ulimo commander named “Ugly Boy” at the direction of Kamara. After Ulimo destroyed a church and a school in the area, a humanitarian organization including Europeans had visited the town. The schoolteacher translated for the group and when they asked who destroyed the buildings, he told them it was Kamara and Ulimo.

In retaliation Kamara is alleged to have imprisoned the teacher for several days tying his elbows behind his back in the Tabe torture method, before ordering Ugly Boy to kill him by chopping open his rib cage. Kamara ordered them to cook his heart and eat it.

None of the witnesses had seen the killing directly but the man’s brother-in-law testified that he buried the teacher’s body some days later and his rib cage had been chopped open. The mother and sister described the hardship they had all suffered in the year’s since the schoolteacher’s death.

“He loved me,” the schoolteacher’s wife wept as she described how tired she was of carrying the burden of being a single parent for the thirty years since. She also said she was tired of “talking to white people” about the murder and never seeing any outcome from it.

The daughter, “10 to 12” at the time of her father’s murder, lost contact with her mother and siblings as they all escaped the village and went to Guinea after the murder. Alone, at a checkpoint, she said she had been gang-raped. It took many years before she was reunited with her mother in a Sierra Leone refugee camp.

She too asked why she should testify again.

“Why should I explain my story to them? Because nothing will happen. My father will not come back to life. He already died for saying the truth,” she said wearing a blanket over her lappa and socks under her flip flops to protect her from the Paris cold.

“The only thing I want is if these people will help by giving us justice,” she said. “For what happened in Foya, I never heard about it. What happened in other parts but not in Foya. Someone living they cut people in pieces while you’re standing. They put you in boiling water. They ask you to put your hand down. While you’re standing they cut it while you’re standing looking at it,” she said running through many of the horrors that marked the war.

“I don’t want that kind of war to happen again,” she said. “I know the pain I went through after the death of my father. I don’t want others to go through it.”

Kunti Kamara’s trial continues on Monday with more witnesses scheduled to testify about the murder of the schoolteacher.

This story is a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project.

PARIS, France – It didn’t take long for prosecutors to catch Kunti Kamara in multiple traps in day two of his war crimes trial Tuesday. The former colonel with the United Liberation Movement of Liberia insisted repeatedly that he had not been trying to flee Europe when he was arrested in January 2020 carrying a falsified Guinean identity card and a bus ticket to Portugal from where, prosecutors alleged, he intended to get a flight to Guinea.

But police had gone to the house of the community leader where Kamara was supposed to be living under strict observation while on bail and found him missing. Kamara’s cell phone location showed that he was already fleeing. He had a new phone registered in a woman’s name – clear evidence prosecutors said, that he was organizing his escape.

Kamara immediately confessed.

“I do not deny that. I was afraid. I wanted to escape,” the 47-year-old told the Paris Court hearing the case against him. He also confessed to obtaining the fake Guinean identity card.

“I ran the process by myself,” Kamara said. “Because when you’re afraid you can do anything. I knew my passport is already in the system. So that’s why I took the laissez passer (travel document). If I could get into Portugal to go to Guinea is very cheap.”

Kamara had been released to the care of Liberian community leader Mohamed Kenneh’s care in 2019 a few months after he was first arrested on charges of crimes against humanity, torture and other “acts of barbarism” in September 2018.

At the time of his 2018 arrest Kamara was well aware that investigators were closing in on him. His former Ulimo ally Alieu Kosiah had visited him in the Netherlands and called him in Belgium before Kosiah was arrested on war crimes charges in Switzerland in 2016. Kamara had also known Mohamed Jabateh, the Ulimo leader who was convicted of criminal immigration fraud in the United States in 2017.

In phone calls recorded by French police Kamara revealed a deep sense of grievance over Kosiah’s arrest.

“Bad people put him in prison,” Kamara told one confidante. “I have to liberate him”.

Throughout the day Kamara refuted suggestions that he had left the Netherlands in 2016 out of fear of arrest. He had been granted asylum in the country in 2004 and had gained citizenship, qualifications as an electrician and 12 years of peace and relative fortune.

Kamara claimed to have moved to Belgium in 2016 because a language barrier had made him unable to secure a long term work contract in the Netherlands. Dutch authorities had made it clear he would not be able to bring Liberian family members to join him without permanent employment. In Belgium, and later France, Kamara claimed, his employment chances would be better.

In truth, said the presiding judge, Kamara knew that Dutch authorities were adding more and more information about his war time activities to his file. That was making it more difficult for him to get work. In another recorded phone call Kamara confessed that he had left the Netherlands because he felt investigators closing in.

Alieu Kosiah was in jail and “I need to leave the place”, he said in a recorded call, according to prosecutors. “I have a Holland passport and I am a Holland citizen. I was there. I worked there and they made me leave the place. So I came here to France.”

In court Kamara expressed disbelief that he had ever said that in a call. “I don’t understand that,” he said. “I’m confused. Nobody made me to leave Holland.”

Prosecutors spent most of the day attacking Kamara’s integrity, even without raising the war crimes of which he is accused. They highlighted the lies he told Dutch authorities when applying for asylum in the Netherlands. He had told them, untruthfully, that he was living in a refugee camp in Guinea when in fact he lived with a relative. He had denied any role in Ulimo knowing that would have ended any chance of asylum.

They made much of the fact that he had fathered two children by different mothers with whom he was no longer in contact. He also had no contact with one of the two children, a son. In 2014 Kamara had married a Liberian woman he had never met and in fact didn’t meet until two years later when he traveled to Liberia for the religious ceremony in 2016.

Prosecutors pointed to a Facebook page that had a fake name, profile picture and a fake email address. Multiple phones and sim cards were found at one of the homes where he was living.

Kamara appeared to sense that the day had gone badly. He was impassioned in his delivery, holding onto the panes of the window that separated him from his lawyers and reaching his hands out beyond the glass box that held him.

He proclaimed his innocence repeatedly and blamed a discredited conspiracy to target people from the Mandingo ethnic group for his prosecution.

“You know the trial is not a fair trial,” he said. “They already arrest people and put them in jail and when they arrest Charles Taylor’s people they release them. Why you people cannot be released?”

In fact people from Ulimo, dominated by Mandingo ethnic group, have made up less than half of those arrested for war crimes in Liberia. Only three Liberians have been convicted of war crimes committed in Liberia’s civil war so far – Kosiah and Jabateh from Ulimo – and Tom Woewiyu of Taylor’s National Patriotic Front for Liberia. A fourth man, former Armed Forces of Liberia commander Moses Thomas, was found liable for the Lutheran Church massacre and ordered to pay $US84m in damages in a US civil court.

Much of the day had been devoted to Kamara’s early life. He had a peaceful childhood in Karnplay in Nimba until his father died in 1994 and then, in 1989, when he was 15, Charles Taylor’s rebels invaded Liberia and shot his mother dead. She had been inside their house when bullets came through the door and killed her.

After Taylor ally Prince Johnson killed President Samuel Doe the remaining Kamara family fled to Guinea where they fought hunger and ethnic tension. When Alhaji Kromah, head of ULIMO, came recruiting fighters in 1992 a 17-year-old Kamara readily signed up. Kamara’s alleged war time activities were not on the agenda today. Prosecutors will begin to reveal their evidence Wednesday.

During the trial Tuesday the Mandingo community in France faced scrutiny for their role in helping Kamara evade justice. Mohamed Kenneh of the Association of Liberians in France had signed an agreement with the court assuring that Kamara would live at his house and observe strict curfew and other rules while released on bail. In court Kenneh conceded that he had not taken that agreement seriously and had only signed it as a favor to Kamara. He had not objected to Kamara moving out of his house in breach of that agreement.

Kamara also claimed that Kenneh had urged him to testify on behalf of Alieu Kosiah during his trial in Switzerland but Kamara said he refused.

Layee Bamba, the head of the Mandingo Association in France, conceded that Kamara had told him police had seized his documents and were looking for him when Bamba bought Kamara a bus ticket to Portugal.

The trial continues Wednesday.

This story is a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project.

PARIS, France – Though the charges being considered in the trial that got underway here today are “barbarous” according to prosecutors, day one was a quiet affair with the presiding judge of the three-judge panel drawing from a box the names of the jurors who would join them in deciding the fate of former rebel Kunti Kamara.

By Anthony Stephens and Prue Clarke

Kamara, 47, faces life in prison if convicted of crimes of torture, killings, rape and other crimes of which he accused during the period of 1993 to 1994 in Foya, Lofa County when he was a commander with the rebel group the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO). “Life in prison” in the French legal system is actually 30 years.

The six-person jury and four alternates – seven women, three men, all white except one man of Asian descent – then joined the judges in seats looking down into the courtroom. It was an unfamiliar sight for court watchers used to US-style jury trials or judge-only trials of previous Swiss and Finnish courts related to Liberia’s civil war. Unlike in those systems, in this court the judges and civilians together make up the jury that will adjudicate the case.

Interestingly, the one potential juror of African descent was rejected by the defense. When asked why after the session, a defense lawyer would not divulge the team’s reasoning.

Kamara appeared in an upbeat mood. From an enclosed glass case – similar to that in which Charles Taylor sat for his trial in the Sierra Leone Special Court – he waved to journalists seated in a balcony area and talked with supporters from the French chapter of a Mandingo society representing people from the ethnic group from which Kamara and many of the ULIMO fighters came.

A translator – interpreting the French language used by the court, for Kamara – and Kamara’s court appointed lawyers sat outside the box talking to him through a window.

After a long procedural process during which the presiding judge gave an overview of the indictment and lawyers discussed the challenges of securing the participation of some witnesses, Kamara was given a chance to speak.

“I don’t know them today, I don’t know them tomorrow,” said Kamara referencing the four accusers in the case – three men and one woman – whose names the court has ordered withheld for their safety. “I continue to say that I am innocent.”

“To my gracious God, where I am standing, those people, I don’t know any of  them,” said Kamara wearing a black t-shirt and jacket. “And I am a ready to answer any questions. There are a lot of questions concerning all of these allegations since I was arrested. I don’t know them today, I don’t know them tomorrow. That’s all I have to say.”

Outside the court one of Kamara’s two court appointed lawyers said Kamara did not understand why he was here.

He feels, “like someone who is being tried in a country that is not his country and in a language that is not his language,” said Marlyne Secci. “So this is how you can imagine his state of mind for this trial. Mr. Kamara always said he was just a ULIMO soldier and he never made all the crimes that they accused him and that is the fact.”

Kamara has admitted that he was a fighter with ULIMO during the period in question but denies any involvement in war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The court heard that In 1997 Kamara made his way to the Netherlands where he lived for 12 years, working as an electrician and securing citizenship before moving to France in 2016. The judge raised the prospect that Kamara’s departure from the Netherlands may have been an effort to elude investigators there and indicated the question would be explored in the trial. At the time Dutch investigators were already looking into bad actors in Liberia’s civil war. In 2017 Dutch arms smuggler Gus Kouwenhoven was convicted in absentia by a Dutch court and sentenced to 19 years prison for his efforts in arming Charles Taylor during the war.

Kamara was arrested in France in September 2018 and released because of a procedural error a few months later. In 2019 he was rearrested as he attempted to flee France on an expired passport.

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 and crimes against humanity irrespective of where they were committed.

This is the first case to take place in France that is not related to the Rwanda genocide. Four previous trials have been of accused Rwandans.

The trial will run until November 4 and will hear from three dozen witnesses including psychiatrists, experts and witnesses. The presiding judge told Kamar that Tuesday’s session will be devoted to Kamara and his life and will not delve into his crimes. Two psychiatrists are listed among the witnesses.

This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project.