AP News, January 8th, 2008
A Sierra Leone clergyman brought the horrors of his country's civil war to a courtroom Tuesday, becoming the first survivor of the carnage to testify at the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor.
Alex Tamba Teh, a soft-spoken pastor and teacher, 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 many to count and being forced to help unload weapons for Sierra Leone rebels from a Liberian helicopter.
Prosecutors accuse Taylor, 59, of orchestrating the atrocities in Sierra Leone from his presidential palace in Liberia's capital, Monrovia. Taylor has pleaded not guilty to all 11 charges.
Tamba Teh, 47, provided only tenuous links between Taylor and the rebels he is accused of supporting, particularly the Revolutionary United Front. But his testimony was a riveting account that brought home the brutality of the civil war and gave a voice to the tens of thousands of victims who suffered through the 10-year conflict.
Tamba Teh said he was among about 250 civilians captured by rebels in April 1998 in the diamond mining district of Kono.
The men were separated from the women and children, and taken to a shelter near a mosque, where a rebel commander known as "Rocky" told the pastor to pray for his fellow captives before mowing them down with a machine gun. Rocky later told another commander called "Rambo" that he had killed 101 men.
"After he had killed the civilians ... he gave instructions that they be decapitated," Tamba Teh told the three-judge tribunal.
A group of child soldiers known as a Small Boys Unit beheaded the corpses with machetes and cutlasses, Tamba Teh said.
Minutes later, a teen he estimated to be about 16 was dragged to a log, screaming and asking what he had done wrong. The other boys pinned their victim down, and hacked off his hands and feet with machetes, Tamba Teh said.
After the mutilation, they grabbed the boy by the stumps. "They were swinging him. They threw him over into a toilet pit. I saw it myself. The boy was screaming, shouting, crying," Tamba Teh said.
Months later, Tamba Teh said he saw weapons delivered to rebels by a Liberian helicopter. A rebel leader known as "Mosquito," who took possession of the weapons, identified Taylor as his "boss."
However, under cross examination Tamba Teh conceded he did not mention Taylor in previous statements to prosecutors and that earlier he said there were two Liberian helicopters, not one.
"It is the pressure," Tamba Teh said, acknowledging he was traumatized by the harrowing events of 1998 and 1999. "My memory cannot serve me well."
Taylor sat calmly throughout Tuesday's testimony, taking notes and occasionally sipping water.
Shortly after he was captured, Tamba Teh said, he was brought before a group of 30 rebel commanders and narrowly survived a vote to kill him.
He was then taken to a rebel camp where captured women were repeatedly raped and forced to forage for food.
Prisoners had the acronyms of the RUF and an allied rebel group, the AFRC, carved on their chests and backs, preventing them from fleeing because they would be killed by enemy rebels if found with such markings, Tamba Teh said.
He was later transferred to another rebel camp where a commander smashed out his front teeth with the barrel of a gun. Tamba Teh opened his mouth and removed a denture to show the court his missing teeth.
Earlier Tuesday, judges allowed into evidence segments from documentary in which victims told of being sexually assaulted or dismembered by rebels who plundered West African diamond fields.
On Monday, a diamond expert testified Sierra Leone rebels backed by Taylor used slave labor to dig up diamonds worth $60 million to $125 million a year, and terrorized the population to assert their control of the fields.
Prosecutors allege 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."
The trial resumed Monday after being was adjourned in June following a chaotic opening day during which Taylor boycotted proceedings and fired his lawyer.
The trial is being held in The Hague because of concerns that holding it in Sierra Leone could spark new unrest.
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On the Net:
Special Court for Sierra Leone: http://www.sc-sl.org
