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06/04/2004:
"Sierra Leone War Crimes Trial Opens Without Chief Suspect"
By SOMINI SENGUPTAPublished: June 4, 2004 new york times
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone, June 3 - A international war crimes tribunal set up to try those responsible for this country's long and crippling conflict opened here on Thursday morning, with vows from the court's chief prosecutor to slay what he repeatedly called "the beast of impunity."
Yet missing from the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone was its leading suspect: Charles G. Taylor, the exiled former president of Liberia and the man accused of fomenting the rebel insurgency in the 1991-2002 war that killed an estimated 50,000 people.
Mr. Taylor, indicted more than a year ago on 17 counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, enslavement and the recruitment of child soldiers, has been given asylum in Nigeria. Three men indicted as his top collaborators in Sierra Leone are dead or missing.
Instead, the first defendants appearing before the court on Thursday were three men who led Sierra Leone's feared pro-government militia, including the country's former interior minister, Sam Hinga Norman. Mr. Norman's militia, the Civil Defense Force, is accused of cannibalism, rape and the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Mr. Norman faces eight counts of crimes against humanity.
"The ghosts of thousands of the murdered dead stand among us," David Crane, an American prosecutor, told the three-judge panel in his opening statement. "They cry out for a fair and transparent trial to let the world know what took place, here in Sierra Leone."
new york times
To his right sat Mr. Norman, 54, scribbling notes on loose-leaf sheets and occasionally looking up with a faint smile. At the end of the day, Mr. Norman stood up and demanded to represent himself. The court adjourned until next Tuesday to consider his request.
The outcome of these trials carries implications far beyond the borders of this small West African country. The Special Court, created jointly by the government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations, represents the first time an international war crimes tribunal has been held inside the country where the conflict took place. The tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia have been holding their hearings in other countries. The Sierra Leone court also represents the first time that the recruitment of child soldiers is being tried as a war crime.
With a price tag of about $80 million, the Special Court is held up as an efficient model of international justice, and one that the United States government, which opposes the Rome-based International Criminal Court, can accept. Washington is a major donor to this court, and Americans fill some of the most important posts, including that of prosecutor.
The Special Court has stirred debate here and abroad about the value of such a tribunal. Some here see it as an unwelcome intrusion from the outside. Others say it would be more significant if it could try major figures, like Mr. Taylor.
"We expect Charles Taylor to account for his involvement," said John Caulker, a member of a human rights group here called Forum of Conscience. "We want to see him here in person and explain."
So far, 13 men have been indicted, though only 9 are in custody and facing trial. Foday Sankoh, the head of the Revolutionary United Front, the rebel group that made hacking off limbs its trademark, died in custody last year. His accomplice, a Liberian named Sam Bockarie, was killed. Johnny Paul Koroma, the former head of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council who seized power in 1997 and later formed an alliance with the rebel front, has gone missing.
The trial of Mr. Norman and two deputies of the Civil Defense Force is to be followed by the trials of Mr. Sankoh's top officials.
The spectators' gallery, separated from the courtroom by a glass wall, was packed with local journalists, defendants' families and ordinary people whose lives were upended by the war. Among them was a man with steel claws in place of hands; both his arms had been chopped off during the war.
Mr. Crane's 40-minute opening statement was part Sunday sermon, part an exposition of international human rights law. "The jackals of death, destruction and inhumanity are caged behind bars of hope and reconciliation," the prosecutor said at one moment.
The prosecution promised a gory catalog of testimony. Former child soldiers, Mr. Crane said, would describe the horrors they had committed. One witness would describe seeing Civil Defense Force fighters decapitate 10 of their captives. Another would tell how the intestines of a man were roasted and eaten.
A lawyer for Mr. Norman said his client could not be held responsible because his militia, which was charged with putting down a rebel insurgency, was ultimately under the command of a West African peacekeeping force stationed in Sierra Leone during the war. "Our man was basically a go-between," the lawyer, Sulaiman Banja Tejan-Sie, said of Mr. Norman.
As for Mr. Taylor, the prosecution continues to insist that he must be handed over.
Mr. Taylor lost a legal challenge earlier this week, when the Special Court's appeal chamber ruled that an international tribunal had the authority to try a head of state. Mr. Taylor's lawyers had argued that, as the president, he enjoyed immunity from prosecution.
