Sierra Leone court finds Charles Taylor guilty

The Special Court for Sierra Leone has found Charles Taylor guilty of aiding, abetting and planning serious crimes after a five year trial. Taylor is the first former head of state to be found guilty by an international court since the Nuremberg trials sentenced Karl Doenitz to 10 years imprisonment in 1946. The trial was significant as Taylor failed to quash the charges on the basis he was head of state at the time of the indictment. 

Charles Ghankay Taylor, the former President of Liberia, faced three charges over a period from 1996 to 2002 crimes against humanity including murder, rape and enslavement, violation of the Geneva Conventions including violence, terrorism and pillage, and other serious violation of international humanitarian law including use of child soldiers.

Taylor was secretly indicted on 7 March 2003. The indictment was made public three months later on his first trip outside of Liberia. He resigned in August and went into exile in Nigeria. He was transferred to the Special Court three years later. Due to security concerns about holding the trial in Sierra Leone, the Special Court arranged for the trial to be held at the ICC offices in The Hague. The trial began in June 2007, but Taylor boycotted proceedings and demanded a new legal team. The prosecution finally opened in January 2008 and took 13 months to get testimony from 91 witnesses. After a delay while an acquit notice was thrown out, the defence opened in July 2009 and took 16 months to collect testimony from 20 witnesses including Taylor.

Taylor studied in America where he protested against then leader William Tolbert in 1979. He supported the Samuel Doe coup a year later and was appointed to Doe’s government. He fled Liberia after embezzling a million dollars but was arrested in the US on another embezzlement charge.  He escaped prison though there is strong evidence he was assisted by the CIA who used him as an agent in Africa. 

Taylor went to Libya where he was one of many West African revolutionaries trained by Gaddafi’s army in the late 1980s. There he met Foday Sankoh the head of Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front. As leader of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia Taylor provided a training camp for the RUF in Liberia as well as instructors, recruits and material support. The RUF attacked Sierra Leone from Liberia with the aid of NPLF troops in March 1991. But the two invaders fell out a year later and Taylor withdrew his NPLF army.

Nevertheless he continued to play an active involvement in the war sending arms, ammunition and other supplies across a porous border ensuring the bitter fighting continued for another five years. The RUF ignored the Abidjan Peace Accord of November 1996 and Sankoh was invited to join the government after an army coup in May 1997. But an ECOMOG force intervened in March 1998, expelled the junta from the capital Freetown, arrested Sankoh and reinstated Tejan Kabbah’s democratically elected Government.

Renegade forces under SamBockarie kept up the fight in the provinces and Bockarie went to Liberia to meet Taylor who was now president of Liberia. Taylor stressed to Bockarie the importance of re-taking the mineral stronghold of Kono so Taylor could resume the trade in guns and ammunition for Sierra Leone diamonds. Taylor told Bockarie to make his campaign fearful to pressure the Sierra Leone Government to release Sankoh from prison and use “all means” including terror tactics to take Freetown.

Bockarie named the attack OperationNo Living Thing and anything that stood in their way would be eliminated. He retook Kono in December 1998 and attacked Freetown in January 1999. All the while, he kept in close contact with Taylor who provided him with a satellite phone. The Liberian president also sent troops and facilitated the purchase and transport of a large shipment of arms and ammunition from Burkina Faso used in the Kono attack.  After Sankoh was released from prison in 1999 he personally delivered diamonds to Taylor as did other RUF leaders until cessation of hostilities in 2002. Sierra Leone diamonds were prized as much greater quality than Liberian ones.

The defence claimed Taylor was a diplomatic force for peace. But as president of Liberia and a member of the ECOWASCommittee he wielded considerable influence over the warring factions in Sierra Leone. But while publicly participating in regional efforts to broker peace, Taylor was secretly fuelling hostilities between the RUF and the Sierra Leone government. While the Court could not find a chain of command between Taylor and Sankoh it was satisfied he gave guidance, advice, guns and money that aided and abetted multiple murders, rape, slavery and other offences as well as planning the attacks on Kono and Freetown in 1998 and 1999.  Taylor is likely to appeal the decision.

Charles Taylor trial of brief interest to celebrity mags

The Special Court for Sierra Leone does not usually feature in world tabloid headlines nor does it typically attract the attention of supermodels and Hollywood stars. The Court has a very serious purpose:genocide. It wants to try those who bear the greatest responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian and local law in Sierra Leone since it was overrun by rebels on 30 November 1996. Its most famous case is the trial of Charles Ghankay Taylor, former President of neighbouring Liberia, who stands accused of 17 crimes against humanity including murder, rape, mutilation, sexual slavery and conscription of child soldiers by arming RUF rebels during the 1991-2001 Sierra Leone civil war.

Taylor's extended trial took a surreal edge recently with the conflicting testimony of a Hollywood star and a supermodel briefly giving case a taste of world tabloid headlines. In the last month the Court heard testimony from actress Mia Farrow which contradicted that of British model Naomi Campbell. Prosecutors had called the model to testify to provide evidence that Taylor had handled blood diamonds used to purchase weapons during the war.

The prosecution said Taylor gave a gift of diamonds to Campbell at a dinner hosted by Nelson Mandela in September 1997. The occasion was a lavish dinner in Cape Town to raise funds for the Mandela Children’s Fund. Campbell attended the dinner along with Farrow and Campbell’s former modelling agent Carole White. Campbell gave evidence on 5 August which attracted large headlines, partially because she told the Court her appearance there was a “big inconvenience” (a mistake for which she would later apologise to the Court) and partially because of the incongruity of a model giving testimony at a genocide trial. As the Washington Post noted, it’s hard to believe that these two worlds could ever collide. “That they did, however, said the Post, "is testament to beauty as both valuable currency and irresistible narcotic."

In her own evidence Campbell said she was woken up from sleep by two unknown men who handed her a pouch saying it was a gift. Because she was sleepy she didn’t ask who the men were or who gave her the pouch. She said she did not even open the pouch until the following morning she was disappointed to find a few “very small, dirty looking stones”. She said either Farrow or White suggested the stones were from Taylor and she believed so herself.

With Campbell’s testimony giving Taylor a lifeline, the Prosecution looked to White and Farrow to give them the evidence they needed. But these two only succeeded in complicating the picture as they contradicted Campbell and each other. Farrow told the court on she heard Campbell say that Taylor had given her a "huge diamond" at the dinner. She said Campbell told the story to a group of guests at breakfast the following morning. Carole White said it wasn’t a huge diamond but rather five separate pieces. She said Campbell and Taylor were seated near each other during the dinner and started flirting. White said Campbell then whispered to her Taylor was going to give her diamonds and she was very excited at the prospect.

Campbell told the court that she later gave the diamonds to Jeremy Ractliffe, a representative of a Mandela charity. Ractliffe said he worried the gift would damage reputations and might be illegal, so he kept the diamonds and did not tell anyone. He issued a statement last week saying that following Campbell's testimony he had now handed over to authorities three alleged "blood diamonds" given to him by the model. South African police confirmed their authenticity.

The appearance of the beautiful and wealthy Western women and their precious stones overshadowed most of the other recent testimony in the trial. Former RUF leader Issa Hassan Sesay, who has already been convicted by the Court for his part in the atrocities, has been on the stand for three weeks. He refuted claims Taylor had directed the rebels when they entered the capital Freetown in 1999. The prosecution preferred to hammer him on his earlier statements Taylor had directed the 1998 attack on diamond-rich town of Kono. Sesay's testimony concludes this week.

It is more difficult to say how much longer will go on for as proceedings head towards the seven year mark. Taylor was indicted on 7 March 2003, when he was still President. The indictment was announced three months later on his first trip outside of Liberia. In August Charles Taylor resigned as president and went into exile in Nigeria. Nigeria finally transferred him to the Special Court in March 2006. Due to concerns about security in Sierra Leone, the Special Court arranged for the trial to be held at The Hague where he was transferred to in June 2006. After legal wrangling, the Prosecution re-opened witness testimony on in January 2008. They closed their case 13 months later after having presented testimony from 91 witnesses. The Defence opened their case on 13 July 2009. The Prosecution also reopened its case to call Campbell, Farrow and White. While the trial briefly reached the women's magazines, it will now once again retreat into international law journals, until the day the judges make their final decision.

Optimistic Sierra Leone president looks for foreign investment

Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma has called on the west to invest in his country on a visit to London. Koroma told the BBC the West African nation is “open” to investment in tourism and mineral investment in bauxite, iron ore and diamonds. Koroma was spruiking his message at a conference last week in the British capital where he also hailed the recent Anadarko Petroleum’s discovery of offshore oil. (photo of Freetown by stringer_bel)

Koroma was assisted in call for investment by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. While Blair’s reputation elsewhere has been sullied by his involvement in the war in Iraq, he remains a hero in Sierra Leone for the troops he sent in 2000 to end the conflict. He is still involved as an adviser to President Koroma and he was cheered as he spoke to the London investment conference. "[Sierra Leone has] got massive natural resources, wonderful possibilities commercially in agriculture, tourism, mining," said Blair. "What it's got now for the first time is a stable system of government with a president who genuinely wants to make change, root out corruption."

Blair also praised Koroma’s attempt’s stamp out corruption which has been a major drawback since the country returned to peace at the turn of the century. By 2002 the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission had investigated 500 cases but relied on the Justice Ministry to follow the cases up. Politicians were not always keen to act leaving Sierra Leone languishing at the bottom end of Mo Ibrahim’s African Governance Act. But recently Koroma has shown signs of stiffening up by sacking two ministers after they appeared in court on graft charges.

Meanwhile Sierra Leone's parliament has also approved a new mining act last week that is designed to boost government revenue and increase transparency in the sector. The Mines and Minerals Act 2009 followed the recommendations of report earlier this year by the National Advocacy Coalition on Extractives. The report argued that because of generous tax incentives, weak capacity and official corruption, the government has not previously received a fair share of mining proceeds. With commodity prices rising again and a recent oil discovery in the country, the government had been keen to introduce new regulations before investors begin a new mining phase.

In September Sierra Leone also signed the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Compact. formally adopting the African Union initiative, drafted in Maputo in 2003. The CAADP aims to ensure Africa's agricultural development as a catalyst for socio-economic growth and its goal is to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty through agriculture. At the signature ceremony Koroma said close to two thirds of his people rely on agriculture for their livelihoods and it contributes almost half of the Gross Domestic Product. “We regard CAADP as being pivotal to our poverty and hunger eradication efforts”, he said.

There is still a long way to go for one of Africa’s poorest countries. 50,000 Sierra Leoneans died in the civil war that racked the country during the 1990s. The UN Development Program judged Sierra Leone the world’s least developed country in 2000. Since then the country has undergone two successful elections. Koroma won the most recent election in 2007 winning a run-off against incumbent vice-president Solomon Berewa. Koroma has followed from the previous administration concentrating on nation rebuilding.

But not everyone agrees the country is on the right track One of Sierra Leone's most popular artists, Emerson Bockarie has released a song "Yesterday Betteh Pass Tiday", recorded in Krio which unfavourably compares the current government to the one it replaced in 2007. The song highlights corruption, the high cost of living, nepotism, tribalism, poor service delivery, poor government salaries and a static economy. Freetown trader Salamatu Bah was inclined to give Koroma’s administration the benefit of the doubt. "The government is trying, and things are better now than before,” said Bah. “The argument should not be which regime is the better or worse - we have voted for change and change is what we demand."

Sierra Leone awaits election results

Early results from Sierra Leone’s independent National Electoral Commission (NEC) of last Saturday’s presidential election show strong support for the opposition party candidate. In results released yesterday, Ernest Koroma of the opposition All Peoples’ Congress (APC) party leads incumbent Vice President Solomon Berewa of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) with Charles Margai of the People’s Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC) in third place. Koroma has almost double the ballots cast for Berewa so far. To win he needs 55 per cent of the vote in order to avoid a run-off. However with only 20 per cent of the vote counted and the NEC continuing to issue updates every day, it is too early to call victory.

Outgoing President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah ordered security forces to keep a high state of readiness as signs grow of public frustration at the slow vote count amid vote-rigging allegations and electoral intimidation. The President addressed the nation on radio and said “"I have instructed the police... to deal firmly with any threats to the peace and security," Seven candidates are vying to replace Kabbah who has been president for 10 years. Kabbah himself is unable to seek re-election after completing the two terms allowed by the country's constitution.

Kabbah was first elected in 1996 but his first term was interrupted by the civil war a year later when he was ousted by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). The war was funded by blood diamonds and claimed 120,000 lives and left many more mutilated and traumatised. Kabbah was returned to power after a military intervention by the Nigerian led Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which defeated the RUF. Kabbah won the most recent poll in 2002 which was organised by the UN, which still had peacekeepers on the ground at the time. The British-led UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) finally withdrew in December 2005.

Kabbah won the 2002 election on the promise of peace. However this time around it is more likely the state of the economy that will determine the winner. Despite reintegration programmes, thousands of ex-combatants and child soldiers (many of whom never went to school) are unemployed. The UN estimates that some 65 percent of Sierra Leoneans are jobless, with unemployment as high as 80 to 90 percent in some areas. Sierra Leone remains a fragile economy dependent on donor funds. The country needs to take further steps to address the root causes of the conflict and cultivate a culture of human rights. Most of the profits from diamond mining are still being pocketed by private hands rather than the Government.

Yet there is a renewed sense of optimism among Sierra Leone 6 million population that the worst of their problems are behind them. There was much enthusiasm for democracy ahead of the weekend election. Voters hope a new government will tackle some of the vast social problems facing the country and finally leave its violent past behind. Sierra Leone's capital Freetown had a carnival atmosphere with chanting and singing on every street corner. Freetown’s traffic was brought to a standstill as young people dance away to open-air sound systems provided by the party’s to engage their support.

The election itself is being managed by the National Election Commission (NEC) which is charged with conducting all public elections in Sierra Leone. The NEC is led by a Chief Electoral Commissioner, who works with 4 other Commissioners each overseeing one area of the country. The Commissioners are appointed subject to the approval of Parliament, which has the job of ensuring that the Commission is not prejudiced towards or against any particular political party or politician. However Opposition parties have criticised the NEC for not dealing with voting irregularities in the last election.

As a result, this latest election was heavily monitored by many outside groups including the National Election Watch (NEW). NEW is a coalition of 75 local civil society organizations that has trained some 150,000 monitors. The group says its mission is to ensure "free, fair and transparent elections" One of these groups, the Mano River Union Women Parliamentary Network (MARWOPNET), fielded all female observer teams in strategic areas in seven of the country’s 13 districts to monitor the 2007 elections process in order to assess and determine its transparency and credibility. It has now lauded the peaceful election and says it will have a beneficial effort on a forthcoming poll in neighbouring Guinea.

Charles Taylor trial starts in The Hague

The trial of Charles Taylor opened yesterday in The Hague with the dramatic boycott of proceedings by the 59 year old former Liberian dictator. Instead his lawyer read out a letter on Taylor’s behalf. In the letter Taylor denounced the court, claimed he could not receive a fair trial and terminated his participation by dismissing his lead counsel. "I cannot take part in this charade that does injustice to the people of Liberia and the people of Sierra Leone," he said in the letter. "I choose not to be a fig-leaf of legitimacy for this process."

Taylor’s lawyer Karim Kahn then walked out of the room in defiance of a court order to continue to represent Taylor for the day. Julia Sebutinde, the British-trained Ugandan presiding judge, said the trial would continue despite Taylor's failure to attend, as the session quickly got bogged down in legal arguments that delayed the prosecution's opening presentation. The case then began with an overview of the history, a description of the crimes and a description of the individual liability for which Taylor could be held responsible.

Charles Taylor has been indicted on 11 charges, including terrorism, murder, rape, sexual slavery, mutilation and recruiting child soldiers linked to his alleged support for rebels in Sierra Leone's civil war. The prosecution claims to have overwhelming evidence that holds Taylor conducted war crimes against Sierra Leone’s civilian population. He is being tried in the Special Court for Sierra Leone in offices borrowed from the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone was set up joint by the UN and Sierra Leone. It is an independent judicial body set up to "try those who bear greatest responsibility" for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Sierra Leone after 1996 during the Civil War that ravaged that country. So far, eleven people have been charged with offences. Ten of these trials have taken place in the capital Freetown but Taylor’s high profile trial was moved out of Sierra Leone due to fears that militias still loyal to Taylor might attack the court room. Proceedings are been broadcast live on four giant screens in Freetown.

Charles Taylor is the first African head of state to go on trial for war crimes before an international tribunal. He is currently being held in the same prison where former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was held when he died in 2006. This is not the first time Taylor has been in jail. In 1985, he was imprisoned in Massachusetts after he stole $900,000 in Liberian government funds in the US. He escaped after a year and returned to Africa.

Taylor first came to world prominence when he launched a revolt from the Ivory Coast which stormed Liberia’s capital Monrovia in 1989. He overthrew former leader Samuel Doe and kept control of the country in a civil war which lasted through the early 1990s. Although he cemented his position by winning an election in 1996, he was eventually ousted by Liberian rebels and Taylor accepted asylum in Nigeria in 2003. Liberia requested Nigeria to extradite him and in 2004 he was released into the custody of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Human rights organisations are hoping his trial sends a message to other dictators that no-one can escape punishment for atrocities. Human Rights Watch say the case provides an important chance for victims to see justice done. “The trial of a former president associated with human rights abuses across West Africa represents a break from the past,” said Elise Keppler, counsel with Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program. “All too often, there has been no justice for victims of serious human rights violations. Taylor’s trial puts would-be perpetrators on notice.”

Taylor has denied all 11 charges. When the case for the prosecution finally started, Chief Prosecutor Stephen Rapp alleged that Taylor waged a campaign of terror against the civilian population of Sierra Leone by arming and training the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel force which murdered and mutilated civilians, raped women and recruited child soldiers. Taylor armed the RUF in exchange for diamonds which he trafficked on the black market despite a ban on conflict diamonds. The decade long war claimed 60,000 deaths and an untold number of mutilations.

If convicted, he is likely to serve his sentence in the UK. Last year British foreign secretary Margaret Beckett said London has agreed to a request from former UN chief Kofi Annan to imprison him if convicted. The tribunal has wide powers of sentencing. It statutes allow a sentence of "imprisonment for a specified number of years" without giving a maximum. This means he could go to prison for life. The trial is expected to last 12 to 18 months.

Ian Stewart: Ambushed

In January 1999, three Associated Press (AP) journalists were been driven slowly in a military convoy down one of the most dangerous streets in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. They were in Freetown, capital of war-racked Sierra Leone. They were reporting the battle between rebel forces and an international military coalition. The rebels had overrun the ravaged city a few days earlier. The journalists were heading towards downtown Freetown when they were hit by an ambush. The convoy had stopped to question men armed with AK-47s. Suddenly gunfire erupted. The journalist’s car was hit. One was killed immediately, the second was unhurt and the third miraculously survived a bullet in the brain. This is his story.

His name was Ian Stewart. He was AP’s West Africa bureau chief and his job was to co-ordinate news coverage from 23 countries. Stewart was from Toronto and studied journalism at Columbia University in New York. He was an experienced foreign correspondent who experienced wars first hand in Afghanistan, Kashmir and Cambodia before being posted to Africa.

In 1997, Associated Press's West Africa correspondent resigned to join Newsday. Stewart was then in Vietnam, missing the adrenalin rush of war zones. Intrigued by a coup that had just occurred in Sierra Leone; he applied for the Africa job. Just before Christmas, he found out he got the job and with it a promotion to bureau chief. AP’s offices were in Abidjan, the commercial capital of the Ivory Coast. Stewart flew in to his new role in February 1998. The day he flew in, he read how a Nigerian led coalition was staging a massive offensive to overthrow the new Sierra Leone ruling junta backed by the infamous rebels, the Revolutionary Army Front. Nigerian fighter jets were bombing Freetown in advance of the ground assault.

The Sierra Leone war to come would be Stewart’s first major African assignment. But first he needed to get himself sorted in Abidjan. He had three staff, an American named Tim Sullivan, a fellow Canadian Glenn McKenzie and a Ghanaian woman Amba Dadson. Although Abidjan was a wealthy city by African standards, its poverty, dirt and desperation were still an eye-opener for Stewart.

In March, Stewart was ready to travel to Sierra Leone. By now the Nigerian led troops had driven the rebel president out of Freetown and were preparing to re-install President Kabbah to power. Stewart travelled to the inauguration with David Guttenfelder, an American who was the AP’s West African photographer. The pair hitched a lift from a Lebanese crew to Sierra Leone’s international airport. Named Lion Mountain by the Portuguese, Sierra Leone ia now officially the worst place on Earth according to the UN Development Program Survey. Life expectancy is 38 years while 164 babies in every thousand die in infancy. Only three adults in every hundred can read and write.

The country had seen decades of almost continuous upheaval since the end of colonisation. In the late 1980s, a low ranking officer named Foday Sankoh founded the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) under the influence of Libya’s Gaddafy. The RUF launched a savage civil war. Women and girls were raped and children were kidnapped and forced to serve in the RUF. Their rise to power was assisted in 1997 by a disgruntled army officer named Johnny Paul Koroma. He held a military post in the country’s diamond producing Kono region. Koroma struck a deal with the RUF to give the rebels access to the mines in return for a share of the profits.

Sankoh then struck a deal with neighbouring Liberian leader Charles Taylor to smuggle guns and money into Sierra Leone while smuggling diamonds out. Koroma deposed President Kabbah and invited the RUF to help form a government. The West African Economic Community was appalled and used a military intervention force called Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) initially set up to impose a peace on Liberia to cross the border into Sierra Leone. Though they had now regained Freetown, much of the rural part of the country remained in rebel hands. Stewart and Guttenfelder travelled to Makeni to observe the ongoing fighting.

There they found a Jesuit run pastoral centre where they tried to heal the wounds of children who suffered in the war. Most of the children had lost arms. The RUF had chopped off their arms with machetes. Others had legs amputated or eyes poked out. Stewart saw this was a war against children. On 9 March they returned to Freetown for Kabbah’s return. The journalists drove through the anarchic city to the ceremony in a football stadium. Kabbah was back in power but the RUF were not yet defeated.

Stewart went back to Abidjan where he prepared for his next assignment: the Pope’s visit to Nigeria. The visit promised to be highly newsworthy. While John Paul II was international respected as a man of peace, his host-to-be Sani Abacha was a butcher whose human rights record was second only to Idi Amin, in the annals of African infamy. Stewart flew to Enugu in Eastern Nigeria where the pope was due to arrive. There, the Pope spoke out about the dignity of human rights. The following day he requested the release of 60 political prisoners and journalists. Abacha made no reference to the request in a ceremony to mark the Pope’s departure. And life went on regardless. Despite Nigeria’s $4.5 billion oil industry, 80 percent of its people lived in abject poverty. Stewart stayed on to interview survivors of the Biafran War and also met workers in the oil rich Niger Delta region. There he also met Myles Tierney, an American television journalist before returning back to Ivory Coast

Barely a few months later news came through that Sani Abacha had died unexpectedly. But at the same time, news was also coming from Guinea-Bissau where officers in Portugal’s former colony had staged a failed coup. Stewart set off to investigate. With help from a Guinean reporter he secretly crossed the border from Senegal into Guinea-Bissau. Portugal had bitterly resisted the end of colonisation and left their old possessions like Angola and Mozambique in a mess. Guinea-Bissau was no different. Stewart drove through the countryside ravaged by war and now full of refugees. 300,000 people were on the move. When Stewart stopped to interview an old man left in an empty town by himself, they were forced to seek shelter from mortar fire.

Stewart’s next overseas assignment was to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to cover another failed coup. In 1997 Laurent Kabila had replaced long-time strongman Mobutu and everyone had high hopes he might lead the DRC in the path of democracy. But instead Kabila went the way of all despots. He abolished all opposition parties, gagged the media and threw out the UN war crimes investigators. Stewart interviewed Kabila in Kinshasa and asked him if he planned to introduce democracy. Kabila replied the problem wasn’t democracy; it was stability. Stewart was able to travel around the capital which was a rat-infested disease-ridden slum. He took the ferry across the Congo River to Brazzaville, the capital of the neighbouring Congo Republic.

The Congo Republic was also racked by a political war. Long time dictator Denis Sassou-Nguesso had regained power after an electoral defeat at the cost of ten of thousands of dead. The capital was emptied out of people. Here again many children had been recruited as child soldiers. Stewart went back to the DRC to follow up on the Rwandan-backed coup against Kabila. He could see fires from his hotel room but no sound of fighting. Later driving through the city, his car was set upon and he narrowly escaped an angry mob. Troops gathered from Angola and Zimbabwe to support Kabila’s army. Stewart saw army troops capture rebels before tying tyres around them. The soldiers set fire to the tyres and the rebels were incinerated.

Stewart escaped to Abidjan, emotionally drained by all he had seen in the Congo. He took some peaceful stories in South Africa, Mali and Burkina Faso to try and get war out of his head. But in January 1999, he was hearing of renewed violence in Sierra Leone. Stewart made arrangements to travel to Freetown with Guttenfelder and the TV journalist Tierney. They flew into an airport terminal swarming with Nigerian soldiers, refugees trying to escape and a few journalists trying to get in. That day, the RUF stormed Freetown overrunning Nigerian positions and destroying everything in their path.

After a couple of days stuck at the airport, the journalists hitched a lift to the capital on a Mi-8 military helicopter. In Freetown they hooked up with an ECOMOG commander whom they bribed to be allowed to stay. The crew spent two days in the relative safety of the ECOMOG zone interviewing survivors. But Tierney was pushing for pictures of combat. On the fourth morning, bombs dropped close to their hotel. The war was coming to them. Despite a curfew, the three men piled into a car to investigate. They hooked up with a military convoy and followed them.

They were forced to stop and duck behind the car when snipers started firing at the convoy. Then they met men armed with AK-47s. A Nigerian bodyguard spoke to the men. Suddenly the rebel turned around and started shooting at the car. Tierney with his camera at the window, died instantly. Guttenfelder on the far side was unhurt. Stewart was seated in the middle and he took a bullet square in the centre of his forehead. Amazingly the bullet missed all vital organs and did not break up on impact. These two impossibilities saved his life. The Nigerians returned fire and killed the shooter and another rebel.

The convoy sped away to a medical clinic at the army barracks. Initially they thought his wound was superficial. Stewart was still conscious and asking Guttenfelder a barrage of questions. News travelled quickly about the attack. The government arranged for a helicopter to remove the dead and wounded journalists. They took them to Conakry, the capital of Guinea where they met a flight to Abidjan. There was little the doctors could do for Stewart in Abidjan. He was running the risk of severe brain damage due to the swelling in his skull. AP arranged for a Swiss air ambulance which took him to London.

Stewart was taken to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in central London’s Queens Square. He was given little chance of survival by the surgeon. He had several craniotomies the first of which carefully removed dead brain cells and foreign matter using a micro-thin suction tube. A second hole was drilled in his brain measure cranial pressure. The second operation removed the bullet itself. The surgeon drilled a hole in the back of Stewart’s brain and the swelling inside provided enough pressure to push out the bullet through the hole by itself.

Stewart’s recovery was long, slow and painful. He had to relearn how to talk, how to walk and how to do simple daily tasks. His left side remains totally paralysed and he has learnt to do all things one-handed. He returned to his parent’s house in Canada where they looked after him. After a year of recuperation, he was ready to go back to work. He wrote a 3,000 word piece for AP describing his Freetown experience. His article “What Price, the News” appeared in hundreds of papers worldwide and won a range of awards. It was eventually turned in a book “Ambushed”. Stewart now lives with his wife in California and speaks publicly about his experiences. In 2002, he spoke to a panel about the death of fellow journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

He said no situation could justify the loss of one journalist in exchange for a story. "No story at all is ever worth dying for,” he said. “If you're killed doing a story, you're never going to tell another story." But he also justified the reason he was in Africa in the first place. "So many people are left without a voice. So what drew me, and I suspect what drew Danny Pearl, was to try to defend and give back a voice to these people.”

Liberia in disguise with diamonds

The UN Security Council has voted Friday to lift the four year embargo on Liberian diamond exports. The move is a welcome none for one of the world’s poorest countries and a recognition that Liberia is making progress after emerging from 14 years of war which claimed the lives of almost ten per cent of the population and displaced half of its three million residents. The British president of the Security Council Emyr Jones Parry said the vote recognised the progress made under current Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and a reflection of the high regard for Johnson-Sirleaf herself who has ruled the country since elections in 2006.

This is the second recent international vote of confidence in Johnson-Sirleaf’s leadership with the UN lifting the embargo on Liberian timber in June 2006. The diamond export ban dates back to 2003 and was meant to stop the flow of “blood diamonds” which were responsible for fuelling conflicts across West Africa. Now that the ban has been lifted, Liberia can now sign up to the Kimberley Process which is an international diamond certification scheme to track the origins of the precious gem in world markets.

Liberian UN ambassador Nathaniel Barnes told reporters Liberia filed an application to sign up to the Process in March and it had now been accepted. The new UN resolution "means a lot to the people of Liberia," he said. The Monrovia government had "the political will ... (to) make good things happen within the diamond industry so that we can move forward." Liberia needs all the help it can get; the country currently has a staggering 85% unemployment rate with former civil war fighters accounting for much of that number.

Diamonds have been at the centre of Liberia’s problems in last two decades. They were discovered in Liberia just before World War I, but it was not until 1925 that the giant British-owned Consolidated African Selection Trust (CAST) sent in prospectors. Liberia was then in a unique position for an African country. It was ruled neither by a European colonial power or a local African people. It had been settled in the early 1800s by freed American slaves.

Its genesis as a nation goes back to 1816 and the formation of a Quaker organisation known as the American Colonization Society (ACS). The ACS was set up with the idea of sending freed slaves back to Africa and bringing Christianity with them. Although many blacks and abolitionists opposed the scheme, in 1822 the ACS succeeded in raising funds to land 86 emigrants in Africa on the Grain Coast at Cape Montserrado. Governed by a few accompanying white agents, the colony did it tough in the early days but eventually prospered.

In 1824 they named their settlement Monrovia after American president (and ACS member) James Monroe. They named the new colony itself, Liberia (freedom). England and France recognised Liberia as an independent country in 1847 but the US refused to follow suit to avoid the sight of a black ambassador in Washington. Eventually Lincoln extended official recognition in 1862 in the middle of the Civil War.

When the impoverished ACS could no longer support Liberia, the country turned to private industry to help. They leased large areas of land to American companies such as Firestone, which operated the largest rubber plantation in the world near the city of Harbel. In 1930 the League of Nations accused Liberia and Firestone of colluding to create near slave labour conditions. Firestone still operates there today and the same problems persist today. Local labourers brought a lawsuit in 2005 against Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire for subjecting workers to slavery and using child labour.

The post World War II regimes of William Tubman and William Tolbert were authoritarian, pro-foreign investment and pro-American. But the gap between rich and poor widened. In 1980, the army staged a coup, formed a ruling council and ended 133 years of Americo-Liberian political domination. Lowly ranked 28 year old Master Sergeant Samuel Doe became head of state. But his regime was dogged by a succession of failed coups. At the end of the 1980s, a new group the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) emerged led by Charles Taylor.

Taylor had a colourful past. In 1979 he escaped Liberia after being accused of stealing almost a million dollars. Five years later he was arrested in the US on charges of embezzling $922,000 of government funds. Taylor escaped from prison and fled from the US. He ended up in Libya where he received military training from Gaddafy. There he met Sierra Leonean Foday Sankoh. Sankoh went home to fight the Sierra Leone government with his infamous Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

Taylor’s NPFL worked closely with the RUF to dominate the diamond trade in their countries. In 1989 the NPFL invaded Liberia from Ivory Coast and soon laid siege to the capital. Taylor eventually stormed Monrovia, and overthrew Doe before torturing him to death a year later. Doe’s death caused Liberia to splinter into several factions. Eventually five neighbour nations sent in an Economic Community Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) to restore order. All the Liberian parties except Taylor agreed to a national government who continued the fight. The war dragged on for most of the 1990s.

Finally under pressure from the UN, Taylor agreed to a ceasefire. In elections in 1996, Charles Taylor won the presidency with a landslide 75% of the vote. Most people voted for him because they knew he would resume the war if he lost. In 1999 a new rebellion broke out. A group calling itself Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), backed by neighbouring Guinea launched attacks in northern Liberia. Then a second group called the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) attacked in the south backed by Ivory Coast.

By 2003, the game was up for Taylor. The UN charged him with war crimes dating back from his involvement with RUF rebels in Sierra Leone. LURD besieged Monrovia as President Bush became involved urging Taylor to leave Liberia. A new African military force led by Nigeria sent troops into Liberia. Nigeria offered Taylor asylum if he agreed to stay out of Liberian politics. He resigned and flew to Nigeria. There he faced increasing international pressure to face trial. Taylor was finally arrested after he tried to cross into Cameroon in 2006. He now awaits trial in Sierra Leone.

Liberia is still trying to pick up the pieces after Taylor. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former World banker and finance minister won a high profile election in 2005 against football hero George Weah. She became Africa’s first female president in the process. Her background gives her good credentials to rebuild Liberia’s shattered economy. She also pledged "to bring motherly sensitivity and emotion to the presidency" as a way of healing the wounds of war. This week’s diamond decision will go a long way to help.

Sierra Leone's RUF diamonds

The diamond industry Rapaport Group, in conjunction with movie maker Ed Zwick, have announced they will be holding a media conference in New York’s Hilton Hotel next Monday to address issues related to the sale of so-called "conflict diamonds". In the conference, Zwick will examine what the industry should do to eliminate conflict diamonds. Also, Martin Rapaport will announce the establishment of the Fair Trade Diamond and Jewellery Association. This will be a non-profit organisation devoted to promoting ethical and fair trade sourcing and production of diamonds and other gems in Africa and elsewhere. Rapaport will also announce the launch of an educational fund for children at risk in Sierra Leone.

The media conference is taking place now to take advantage of the international publicity on the issue generated by Zwick’s current movie release “Blood Diamond”. The film is based on a book called “Blood Diamonds” by Greg Campbell. The book and the film are set in the war torn West African nation of Sierra Leone in 1999. Sierra Leone is a major diamond producer but its exports were banned during the civil war to stop profits funding military arms. Campbell’s thesis was that although Sierra Leonean diamonds had been banned from the legitimate market, trading continued as exporting from non-diamond producing nearby nations such as Liberia and The Gambia rose dramatically during the war.

Sierra Leone was a former British colony which gained independence in 1961. Like most African countries, it has had a troubled subsequent post-colonial existence. The architect of independence was Milton Margai. Still regarded as Sierra Leone's greatest statesman, Margai merged the two British political entities (the coastal colony and the inland protectorate), became the country’s first prime minister, and oversaw the creation of a new constitution. He was idolised by his people but died in office in 1964 and was replaced by his brother Albert. The country then steadily deteriorated under weaker leaders leading to political violence and military coups. In the 1970s, Siaka Stevens consolidated power through the military and eventually declared a one-party state.

In 1991, a new opposition movement emerged called the Revolutionary United Front. The RUF's aim was to overthrow the government but it had no clear platform on what to replace it with. Its leader Foday Sankoh was bankrolled by neighbouring Liberian president Charles Taylor. In March 1991, Sankoh began to attack villages in eastern Sierra Leone from their base across the Liberian border. The RUF soon gained control of the mines in the Kono district which produces two-thirds of Sierra Leone’s diamonds. Armed with the profits from these mines, they pushed the army back towards the capital Freetown. The official government was overthrown in a coup and the RUF used the power vacuum to take over more of the country. By 1995 they were at the gates of Freetown itself with a victory seemingly inevitable.

But the increasingly desperate government turned to a mercenary army, a South African private military company called Executive Outcomes (EO). EO was a powerful paramilitary organisation founded from the nucleus of the shadowy South African Special Forces which were being disbanded as the apartheid era came to an end. Within a month of deployment in Sierra Leone, EO had successfully repulsed the rebels and recaptured the Kono mines.

With international pressure mounting, the central government agreed to hand over power to a civilian government via presidential and parliamentary elections, held in April 1996. The new government was led by an experienced UN diplomat Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. Kabbah wanted to end the war which had already killed thousands, created a humanitarian crisis and ruined the country’s economy. He met Sankoh in Cote d’Ivoire where the two men signed the Abidjan peace accord in November 2006. But Sankoh was overthrown as leader of the RUF in May 1997 and the new leaders reneged on the agreement. Around the same time, a new military group in Freetown called the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council carried out a successful coup against Kabbah.

The AFRC then joined forces with the RUF to take united control of the country. But within nine months, the exiled Kabbah won back power with the aid of a Nigerian-led multi-lateral force called ECOMOG (Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group). Kabbah signed a second peace agreement in Togo with Sankoh, restored as leader of the RUF, in 1999 called the Lomé Peace Accord. Once again, the RUF broke the peace. Finally an international force of British and Guinean troops entered the country in 2001 and routed the last remnants of the RUF. In 2003, Sankoh died in prison awaiting trial. The chief prosecutor said Sankoh's death granted him "a peaceful end that he denied to so many others".

The war claimed tens of thousands of deaths and two million (one third of the population) were made refugees. It was a war characterised by child soldiers, killings and amputations. By 2001, Sierra Leone was officially the poorest country in the world. Yet a 2002 report ranked Sierra Leone 11th of the world’s diamond producing nations with a total value of $70 million and 0.2% of the world’s market (Australia and Botswana are the world’s leading diamond producers with 50% of the market between them). Most of Sierra Leone’s diamond trade in the 1990s went overseas illegally to finance the RUF armed resistance against the government.

Half of the world’s trade in diamonds is controlled by the South African company De Beers. They control a cartel to keep the price of diamonds artificially high in order to maintain the precious status of the gem. Because of their status in the market, they were under pressure to lead the fight against the sale of conflict diamonds. Haunted by the obvious failure to stop Sierra Leonean diamonds reaching the market, De Beers and the New York based World Diamond Council, launched a certification scheme in 2002 known as the Kimberley Process (named for the South African city where the parties first met to discuss the issue). Countries signing up to the process guarantee that a) their diamonds do not finance rebel groups seeking to overthrow a UN-recognized government b) their diamonds are accompanied by a Kimberley Process certificate and c) they do not export or import diamonds to non-members of the scheme.

45 diamond producing nations (including Sierra Leone) have signed up to the Kimberley Process. But it is not without its flaws. A UK-based pressure group Global Witness criticised the process as lacking proper oversight of national registration schemes. It cited the Central African Republic as having has recently suffered a coup which gave rebel forces control over its diamond mines and yet is still part of the Process.

Meanwhile Sierra Leone is finally beginning to recover from the ravages of a decade-long war. The RUF metamorphosised into a political party. In the most recent election in 2002 they gained just 2.2% of the popular vote and no seats in the parliament. Kabbah was re-elected president in the same election with a landslide 70% of the vote. Sierra Leone will go to the polls again this year when his term expires and the constitution forbids him to stand for re-election. Many in the country are concerned that Charles Margai (nephew of the country’s founder Milton and son of second PM Albert) is about to set himself up a potential dictator when Kabbah finally calls it a day.