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A Finnish court on Tuesday began hearing witnesses in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, an AFP reporter said in a war crimes trial, the first of its kind in the country.
The court is in the West African state for a case against Gibril Massaquoi, a former senior member of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a Sierra Leonean rebel group who also fought in Liberia.
Massaquoi, a Sierra Leonean national, has lived in Finland since 2008 but was arrested there in March last year after a rights-based NGO investigated his war toll.
A case against the 51-year-old man then began on February 3 in this northern European country, where he is accused of responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed between 1999 and 2003.
But in a historic move, Finnish judges are also hearing evidence on Liberian soil – the first time that war crimes proceedings have taken place in the country.
About a quarter of a million people were killed between 1989 and 2003 in a conflict marked by brutal violence and rape, often perpetrated by child soldiers.
Very few people have been tried for war crimes committed in Liberia, and none inside the country.
Thomas Elfgren, a lead Finnish investigator associated with the case, called the proceedings “historic”.
He clarified that they are not, however, comparable to an international tribunal.
“At the end of the day, it’s a Finnish court that will make a decision in Finland,” Elfgren said.
Finnish law allows the prosecution of serious crimes committed abroad by a citizen or resident.
The trial began Thursday with the testimony of a prosecution witness, said an AFP journalist.
The witness said that she and a friend met Massaquoi as they were leaving rebel territory in 2000 and that he told them he would take them “to heaven”. They were then shot and her friend died, the witness said.
An official familiar with the matter told AFP that the court would question three witnesses on Thursday at an unknown location in Monrovia.
Hearings will then continue for several weeks, at a rate of around 10 witnesses per day, the official said, who added that the testimony would likely be heartbreaking.
Murder and cannibalism
Finnish court documents consulted by AFP detail a litany of accusations of abuse committed or ordered by Massaquoi, including murder, rape, torture, enslavement and use of child soldiers.
Atrocities against civilians were common during the war, with drugged fighters cutting off people’s limbs.
Finnish judges and lawyers last week visited remote villages in northern Liberia, which are at the heart of the case against the former rebel commander.
In one of the villages, according to court documents, witnesses said fighters raped at least seven women in a raid, and killed and dismembered other villagers, whom they ate.
Massaquoi insists he was involved in peace negotiations elsewhere in the region at the time.
He will follow Thursday’s debates by video link from Finland, according to the official close to the matter.
In a turning point for Massaquoi, he himself already provided evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2003, for the separate civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone.
The former RUF member received legal immunity for his role in the Sierra Leone conflict in exchange for his evidence, and then moved to Finland.
But he was not given immunity for his alleged actions in Liberia, and Finnish police opened an investigation in 2018 after an investigation by rights group Civitas Maxima.
War crimes tribunal
Only a handful of Liberians, including former warlord turned president Charles Taylor, have been tried and sentenced for their role in the war, and all in jurisdictions outside the country.
There are regular calls for a war crimes tribunal in Liberia itself, but some former warlords remain powerful figures in an impoverished country. President George Weah has so far resisted appeals.
But the Liberian government has consented to the Finnish court operating on its soil, which Elfgren says is crucial.
The official close to the case also said there had been “direct cooperation” between the Finnish court and the Liberian justice ministry.
He added that the location of the Monrovia court is secret for security reasons.
“We have to keep in mind that there is always the possibility that someone is unhappy with what we are doing,” he said.
bur-zd-lal-eml / tgb
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