REBELS "CRIMINALLY GUTTED AN ENTIRE NATION" SAYS INTERNATIONAL PROSECUTOR

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

July 5, 2004 - (IRIN) Three former commanders of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel group accused of chopping off the limbs of innocent civilians, gang raping women and burning villagers alive in their homes, stood in the dock on Monday as Sierra Leone's Special Court put them on trial for war crimes.

But as Issa Hassan Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao listened to the 18 counts of crimes against humanity against them, the prosecution made reference to three more powerful men at the heart of the RUF's terror campaign during the 1990's who are now beyond the court's reach.

Foday Sankoh, the founder and historic leader of the RUF died in prison last year, Sam Bockarie, his top military commander was killed in a hail of bullets while fighting as a mercenary in Liberia and former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who supplied the rebel movement with guns and ammunition in return for smuggled diamonds, has been granted political asylum in Nigeria.

"Throughout this war crimes trial... the phantoms of the deceased indictees Foday Sankoh and Samuel Bockarie will be ever present in this hall of justice," David Crane, the Special Court's chief prosecutor said as the trial of those deemed most responsible for the RUF's atrocities during the 1991-2001 civil war opened in Freetown.

Sankoh, who had become senile, died in custody in July 2003, and Bockarie, his right-hand man, widely known by his nickname Mosquito, was killed in Liberia two months earlier.

Crane also launched a thinly-veiled attack on the international community for failing to deliver Taylor to Sierra Leone to stand trial. The former Liberian warlord was forced to quit his own country in August last year as rebel forces advanced into the capital and now lives in exile in Nigeria.

"Charles Taylor would be sitting next to these accused war criminals today had he been turned over to this tribunal for a fair trial," Crane, an American lawyer who formerly worked for the Pentagon, said in his opening statement.

The three RUF defendants in court on Monday trooped jauntily into the newly-built trial chamber. Gbao, the RUF's Overall Security Commander, and Battle Field Commander Sesay smiled broadly as the prosecution outlined its case.

Kallon, who was also a Battle Field Commander, appeared more intent on following a translation of court proceedings on his headphones.

"Our evidence will show time and time again that these indictees criminally gutted an entire nation," Crane told the court, which has five foreign judges appointed by the United Nations sitting alongside three Sierra Leonean judges.

"The RUF physically mutilated men, women and children, including amputation of hands, feet, breasts, buttocks, lips, ears, noses, genitalia, and carving RUF on their bodies," Crane said in his opening statement at the RUF trial.

The prosecution promised to call one witness from the north-eastern town of Koidu who saw 25 men and women "roasting to death in a burning house, their cries adding to this true living hell on earth".

The man was then forced to watch his wife being raped as his children sat by his side.

"(She) was raped by eight different RUF rebels before she was stabbed to death with a bayonet by the last RUF rapist," Crane said. "Why does he recall there being eight rapists.... because the witness had to count out loud the number as they tore into his wife."

For the first time at a war crimes tribunal the charge of forced marriage was brought up.

"Women were especially singled out by these rabid dogs from hell for over a decade; degraded, enslaved, mutilated, assaulted, sodomised and forced to live life in the bush," Crane said. "We will show that this condition, these forced marriage arrangements, were and are humane acts and should forever be recognised as a crime against humanity."

Another new charge is the recruitment of child soldiers.

From: http://www.irinnews.org
"There is in Sierra Leone an entire lost generation of children, lost souls wallowing in a cesspit of physical and psychological torment. No child should be forced into situations that cause them to mutilate, maim, rape and murder," Crane said.
The RUF trial is the second to open at the Special Court, as it tries to punish those bearing the "greatest responsibility" for the atrocities committed during Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war.
Last month the prosecution began its case against the leaders of the Civil Defence Force (CDF), which supported elected President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. The defendants in that trial are former interior minister Sam Hinga Norman, who founded the CDF, Moinina Fofana, the military commander of the militia group, and High Priest Allieu Kondewa, who conducted initiation ceremonies for new recruits.
A third trial, of former members of a military junta which briefly overthrew Kabbah in 1997, is due to open at a still unspecified date in the near future.
Sierra Leone's Special Court is the first international war crimes tribunal to sit U.N.-appointed international judges alongside local colleagues in the country where the atrocities actually took place.
However, for many Sierra Leoneans the relevance of its trials has been diminished by the death or absence of many of the key players in the brutal conflict.