Buyers of Blood Diamonds from Charles Taylor Won't Face Justice from UN's Sierra Leone Court

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, January 22 -- Charles Taylor directed slave labor to mine diamonds in Sierra Leone and kept and sold more than one thousand diamonds, his prosecutor Charles Rapp told reporters on Tuesday. Inner City Press asked, what about holding those who bought the diamonds accountable? It has been reported that throughout the 1990s, the volume of diamonds purchased from Liberia was twenty-four times that nation's known output. Just where did the purchasers think the carats were coming from?

    Rapp said such prosecutions are difficult, requiring a showing of "actual knowledge and affirmative acts." He pointed to the conviction for economic but not war crimes of Guus Kouwenhoven, who was Taylor's timber-man, controlling half of the hardwood in Liberia. Rapp said that on appeal, the Dutch prosecutors can put in more evidence and will. But apparently, the Special Court for Sierra Leone will not be indicting any corporations or corporate interests. For them, impunity continues.

Digging for diamonds, accountability not shown

            Rapp says he will prove that in 1998, Taylor gave an order to "take and hold" diamond fields in Sierra Leone. He said it was unimportant whether the motive to start the war was diamonds, or if their importance only because known later. He said there are documents of a transfer of 1700 diamonds to Taylor, two to three hundred of which went into buying war materiel, the rest that Taylor kept for himself. For this, he said, Taylor can be charged with pillage. It would be a "challenge," Rapp said, to "locate his resources." In fact, Taylor's legal costs are being paid.

            Rapp announced that Canada had earlier in the day pledged five million dollars to the Special Court. In other UN-affiliated court funding news, while multiple assurances have been given that France has physically paid the funds it committed to the court to try those charged with killing Rafiq Hariri in Lebanon, on Tuesday a French official said if the money has not been paid, it is not a technicality, a matter of "pipes." We'll see.

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Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

  Because a number of Inner City Press' UN sources go out of their way to express commitment to serving the poor, and while it should be unnecessary, Inner City Press is compelled to conclude this installment in a necessarily-ongoing series by saluting the stated goals of the UN agencies and many of their staff. Keep those cards, letters and emails coming, and phone calls too, we apologize for any phone tag, but please continue trying, and keep the information flowing.

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