The trial of Charles Taylor

It’s 8 in the morning, far too early to be going to court but this time it’s different. I’m at The Special Court for Sierra Leone to watch the live telecast of the Taylor defence opening from The Hague. Here in Freetown, we’re two hours behind European time. The proceedings actually begin at 10 am so we’re here at 8.

Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president and warlord was indicted by The Special Court in 2003 on 11 counts of crimes against humanity. He was allegedly at the helm of Sierra Leone’s decade long civil war, funding the rebel groups, the RUF and AFRC in exchange for diamonds. The charges set some important precedents. Both rape as a tool of war and the recruitment of child soldiers was criminalized. Also his indictment as a head of state paved the way for the International Criminal Court’s move on Sudan’s Omar al Bashir.

I’m more excited than I should be, given the gravity of the occasion. But I feel like I’m part of history. Some day in the future I might be able to tell someone where I was when Taylor broke his seven year silence and testified.

We huddle into a semi circular screening room with two large plasma screen TVs. I am joined by some civil society observers, members of the international media and local NGO workers. I glance around to see if I can spot any former victims. Of course I know they would look like anyone else so I ask Peter Andersen the public relations and outreach officer at the court if he recognises anyone. He doesn’t and I wonder why.

I’m told that when the AFRC and RUF trials were being conducted in Freetown the court house was packed with all sorts of people. But relocating Taylor—in 2006 his trial was shifted to an ICC courtroom in The Hague for security reasons—has evidently come at a price. People are no longer able to observe the process as closely as they had done in the past.

The opening by defence lawyer Courtenay Griffiths is fairly predictable. Of course Taylor denies all charges. Some excuses were that he was too busy rebuilding Liberia after a civil war to be bothered with neighbouring Sierra Leone. Snickers Mexican waved around the room. Here in Sierra Leone Taylor has always been guilty.

On the second day of trial Taylor finally testifies. Some bits were most amusing. When asked about diamonds that were transported to him from Sierra Leone in washed out mayonnaise jars, he replied, “This never happened, not in a mayo jar, not in a coffee jar, not in anything, I never received diamonds from the RUF.” Griffiths also asked him to spell out the names of every single African leader he mentioned. This took a good 15 minutes.

At some point I started to switch off when Griffiths began questioning him about how his father and his mother met and how she became pregnant with him. If a writer were paying close attention it is quite possible to pen a Taylor biography just from his testimonies.

The crowd in the screening room has not grown and I begin to wonder if people even care. Peter says that one of the reasons for the poor turnout could be the ungodly timing. I’m somewhat convinced but I still don’t understand why more people have not shown up to see the man that virtually ruined their country.

My short trousers/skirt

I must start off by saying that I’m not auditioning for another one of Eve Ensler’s monologues. But I do tend to get shooed out of government offices for turning up in linen capris which end way below my knees and are not short by any measure.

This first happened when one of my reporters Ibrahim took me to court. The guards at the entrance made a huge fuss about the fact that I was wearing trousers and that my head was not covered. Apparently it’s an unwritten rule, yes, unwritten that women must appear in court only in skirts. I caught a couple of women in pencils so obviously knees are not the problem. Coming back to my own trouser trials, Ibrahim argued with the guard and ushered me in before he could protest.

My second time at court I was not that lucky. I was wearing capris again—same style, different colour—and was standing by the cafeteria minding my own business. At this point a guard came up to me and said that I was in contempt of court because of my attire. I scurried off to the top of a flight of steps where evidently I wasn’t in contempt anymore. The distance between the two positions was approximately 5 metres.

I was fortunate to run into a prominent female lawyer and asked her if there was a formal rule about skirts and head dresses. He got all excited and said that they had been trying for months to get the guards to stop harassing people. Obviously this has not worked and easy targets like me—I’m whiter than most people here—are still wagged fingers at. So I’ve decided to relent and put on a skirt the next time I go to court, just so I don’t court any more trouble.

But that’s not the end of my wardrobe woes. The other day I accompanied my reporter Kai Samba to Parliament and was stopped at the gate by a couple of female guards who stared disdainfully at my crumpled capris (we haven’t had power at home so I haven’t been able to iron anything). “We only allow formal wear and Africana,” she said. I put on my ‘I’m so stupid’ look and my strongest British accent and tried to be as foreign as I could. I promised to cover my legs completely the next time I showed up. So they let me go with a warning. I haven’t asked but I’m pretty sure that there’s no written rule about women wearing Africana to parliament either.

I came to Freetown with exactly four pairs of trousers (capris included) and two skirts, one of which happens to be short. Why is Sierra Leone threatened by my short(ish) skirt and trousers? Hey this is turning into an Ensler piece after all.

For Aisata

Last Sunday was my worst day in Freetown so far. I had to attend a funeral of one of my female reporters who had succumbed to a severe bout of typhoid. No one in the world should have to die of typhoid. But in one of the poorest countries in the world, you’d have to be pretty privileged to be able to say that.

I last saw Aisata a month ago when she attended my first workshop. She was already ill and showed me some Chinese pills she was taking. Going to the hospital is prohibitively expensive for most people—you have to pay 20,000 leones just to be seen. After that I kept hearing reports about her but was convinced that she’d be back soon. I’ve had typhoid and I was fine in a few weeks.

But then the other day one of her colleagues told me that she’d put her faith in a traditional healer and her condition was critical. I slapped my forehead and thought that was the worst possible thing she could have done. A traditional healer’s first instinct is to tell you that you’ve been shot by a witch gun. Then they proceed to remove these ‘bullets’ by making ugly incisions on your arms and legs. Aisata claimed she was feeling better once these so called bullets had been extracted.

Of course, without proper medical care she got worse very quickly. I’m told at this point the traditional healers whisked her off to Waterloo, a suburb in Freetown and told her that she must not see or speak to anyone. A few days later, Aisata had passed away.

I attended her wake and watched her two young children stare blankly at the crowd of people gathered in their house. I know that traditional therapies are very popular in Sierra Leone, but are also very dangerous in a lot of cases. One of the reasons for the country’s high rate of maternal mortality is women’s reliance on midwives who use unsterilised equipment resulting in infections and death.

Medical care in Sierra Leone is pathetic to put it mildly. A fake drugs market thrives on people’s desire for cheap medication. You have to be really careful buying even Aspirin in Freetown. In one of my drawers I have a whole catalogue of rip-off drugs that are available on the streets.

Aisata was a reasonably educated woman who lived in Freetown. When she opted for traditional treatment she knew her options. I shudder to think of the scores of people in the provinces that don’t even know any better.