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.