From the Liberian TRC

Liberia's Taylor ordered mass execution,panel hears

Tue 10 Oct 2006 22:51:57 BST
By Alphonso Toweh

MONROVIA, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Former Liberian President Charles Taylor ordered the execution of 250 mercenaries who fought in Ivory Coast's civil war, an ex-fighter from Liberia's war testified to a truth panel on Tuesday.

Mohammed Sheriff told Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission how his comrades beat Sierra Leonean warlord Sam "Maskita" Bockarie to death and executed 250 of his fighters.

Taylor, who fled Liberia in 2003, is currently in a cell in the Hague awaiting trial for alleged war crimes committed during Sierra Leone's civil war -- though not directly for any crimes in Liberia or Ivory Coast.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, elected late last year, has ordered the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the hope of laying the ghosts of Liberia's bloody 1989-2003 civil war, although some fear the exercise may open up old wounds.

Sheriff told the commission's first testimony hearing that he fought for Taylor against Guinean soldiers before being sent to Ivory Coast, where civil war broke out in September 2002.

Sheriff, wearing black jeans and a blue T-shirt, told the commission he, Bockarie and other "target commanders" were given $475,000 for the operation in cocoa-growing Ivory Coast.

But later, amid international outcry over the war in Ivory Coast, Bockarie and his fighters were eliminated on Taylor's orders, carried out by soldiers under Taylor confidant Benjamin Yeaten at a place called Tiaplay near Liberia's border with Ivory Coast, Sheriff testified.



"JUST JOKING"

"He (Yeaten) asked Sam Bockarie for his pistol-45 because his was not working. Sam knew that Yeaten was just joking and he decided to give his pistol to him. When he got his pistol from him, it was how he gave (the) order that they should knock Sam Bockarie down. He was knocked down. His head was beaten with sticks until he died," he said.

"Taylor passed an order through Yeaten that 'You are wasting time. I want you to destroy all evidence. All those boys that came with Sam Bockarie must be executed.' Those that were in Tiaplay, they were 250 in number, they were tied up and executed," Sheriff said.

Bockarie's wife was also killed, he said.

Bockarie, who had already been indicted before the same Sierra Leone war crimes court which is trying Taylor, had previously been reported to have died in a shootout with Liberian security forces in May 2003.

Taylor started Liberia's civil war in late 1989 when he launched an uprising against President Samuel Doe. He stands accused of backing rebels who fought a decade-long war in neighbouring Sierra Leone in the 1990s in return for diamonds.

Doe was later brutally hacked to death on film by a splinter rebel group. Taylor was elected president in 1997 before another cycle of violence forced him from power in 2003.

U.N. peacekeepers have helped bring peace to Sierra Leone and Liberia, while Ivory Coast has an uneasy ceasefire and is still split into a rebel-held north and government-ruled south.





© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Saddam's back in court

Having been thrown out yesterday, Saddam returned to the Courtroom today. Just another episode in the Saddam Trial, the long running saga of the former dictator shouting and then being thrown out or the trial's video and audio link being cut out for the outside world... Or so it seems if one is watching TV news in the UK (and I suspect the US). The witnesses and their testimonies rarely get mentioned, while the evidence is almost always ignored. What the producers want is drama... preferably with Saddam shouting. So how can the trial fullfill its mission?

Aceh Victims Criticise Tribunal's Scope

(seen on Al Jazeera, on Saturday 20 August 2005 8:28 AM GMT)

Almost all of those killed in the 29-year war were civilians

Victims of Aceh's civil war have expressed outrage that a human rights tribunal for the Indonesian province will not consider atrocities committed during three decades of fighting.

Government negotiators and rebel leaders, saying they did not want to open old wounds, argued that the court should only look at alleged violations that follow the signing of a peace agreement days ago in Finland.

"If we keep looking back to the past, we will continue to blame each other and there will be no end to it," Indonesia's Justice and Human Rights Minister Hamid Awaluddin said on Friday.

"There would be no peace in Aceh. So we decided to look forward."

Mostly civilians killed

Almost all of the 15,000 killed in the 29-year war were civilians.

The military - and to a lesser extent Free Aceh Movement rebels, better known by their Indonesian acronym GAM - have been accused of extrajudicial killings, torture, kidnappings, rape and disappearances.


A truce between warring sides was signed in Finland last week. Many of the alleged atrocities escaped the international spotlight. Aceh, on Sumatra island's northern tip, was closed to foreigners before the 26 December tsunami crashed into the province's shorelines, sweeping villages to sea. In the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, a civil servant said he was unhappy with the decision to create a tribunal that ignores past crimes. He said that rebels kidnapped his cousin four years ago, never to be returned, and that Indonesian soldiers killed his uncle.

"The military accused my uncle of being a GAM member. They ripped open his stomach with a knife and dragged him on the ground for 20 metres," the 35-year-old said, requesting anonymity.

Afraid

Despite the signing of the 15 August peace accord, he and many others are still afraid.

"The military accused my uncle of being a GAM member. They ripped open his stomach with a knife and dragged him on the ground for 20 metres"

Unnamed civil servant
"I wish I could see my uncle's killer brought to court," he said.

"He should be punished for what he did to my family."

Human rights groups also said victims of the brutal conflict deserve justice.

"This is their right," said Hendardi, the director of the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association.

Like many Indonesians, he uses one name.

"The military and the rebels should both be held accountable."

Disarmament

The peace agreement was signed after the rebels gave up their long-held demand for full independence and agreed to disarm.

In return, Jakarta offered rebels amnesty and said it would give the province a greater say in running its affairs through a special autonomy deal that gives them the right to choose their own government.

Indonesia will withdraw more than
half of its 50,000 troops from Aceh
Indonesia also promised to withdraw more than half of its 50,000 troops from Aceh under the eyes of more than 200 EU and Southeast Asian peace monitors.

Some people, including lawmakers in Jakarta, have expressed concern that the terms of the peace accord were reached without little outside consultation.

But victims said that's the way it's always been.

Firdaus, a 24-year-old resident of Lhoknga, 45km southwest of Banda Aceh, said government troops shot his father.

"We could not say anything then," Firdaus said. "And we cannot say anything now."

AP
By

You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C401885F-A5AF-4E72-8C15-C706BD56DA2F.htm