Global Policy Forum

By Douglas Farah

It was a day that Lami Dusujaroka, who in 1999 lost both his hands to a rebel with a machete, never believed would come. On March 10, five people accused of overseeing some of the most horrific war crimes of Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war were taken into custody in a coordinated operation and whisked off to a maximum-security prison on an island off this oceanside capital.

The five will go on trial for alleged war crimes in a special joint U.N.-Sierra Leone court that is being studied in other countries as a model for dealing quickly and fairly with war crimes. Cambodia is taking a similar approach.

The mandate of the court here is not to punish every crime committed during the war, which centered on control of diamond fields, one of the impoverished country's few sources of wealth. With a limited lifetime and budget, the court is charged with prosecuting people who organized and oversaw atrocities that occurred starting in 1996, not necessarily those who carried them out.

The war ended last year with the ultimate demobilization of the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the pro-government militias known as Kamajors. But the conflict left the country traumatized.

"I am so happy," said Dusujaroka, chairman of a dusty camp of huts covered with plastic sheeting that is home to several hundred victims of the RUF's terror-by-amputation campaign. "No one punished these people when they started this, so they kept doing it. Without a court to try them, they will keep doing it again and again."

The new-style court is a hybrid, established by a treaty between the United Nations and Sierra Leone, in an effort to insulate the trial process from politics while giving Sierra Leonean society a role in closing the books. Its judges and lawyers come from Sierra Leone and other countries; they will try cases based on international laws against war crimes.

This structure reflects growing frustration with the slow-motion justice at tribunals for war crimes committed in Rwanda and the Balkans. Those courts are run entirely by the United Nations and each draws about $100 million a year in U.N. funds. Trials have dragged on for years.

John Cerone, executive director of the War Crimes Research Office at American University's Washington College of Law, said the Sierra Leone court was unique as the only present-day war crimes court to sit in the country where the atrocities occurred; it has a fixed budget of $16 million a year and three-year mandate. It is funded by direct donations from U.N. members, rather than from the general U.N. budget. "Clearly the Sierra Leone court is operating much more quickly and on a much smaller budget than other U.N.-mandated courts," Cerone said.

It took prosecutor David Crane, who left his senior post in the inspector general's office at the Pentagon to work with the court, only seven months to bring the first indictments. The court's credibility was greatly enhanced by the arrests that quickly followed, netting some of the most feared people in the country. Two others he charged remain at large; court officials said about 20 other people will be indicted soon.

The war was characterized by the mass use of rape as a weapon of terror, the abduction of thousands of children who were forced to become combatants, the burning of villages and the signature atrocity of hacking off the arms, legs, lips and ears of civilians, including children as young as 2.

"I have never seen a more black-and-white case, a situation of good versus evil," said Crane, a bookish man who worked on some of the Pentagon's most sensitive internal investigations. "The war was about diamonds from the beginning."

Crane, who has served as assistant general counsel for the Defense Intelligence Agency and taught international law at the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's School, has held town meetings across the country to explain the court's work. "Everyone," he said, "is a victim, a witness, a perpetrator or a combination of that."

The legal strategy, Crane said in an interview in the court's offices in a converted house near the center of the capital, is to prosecute those responsible as part of a "joint criminal enterprise."

While Crane and his chief investigator, Alan White, are American, 50 percent of the court's professional staff members are African, and more than a third are from Sierra Leone. The staff, including Crane, has traveled widely in the country, gathering testimony and digging for evidence. "It is a lot like a drug case, but with diamonds as the product," Crane said. "The primary motive was to take over a commodity, diamonds, by taking over Sierra Leone after Liberia, followed by Guinea. It is an organized, international criminal case we are prosecuting here."

The RUF launched the conflict with the support of Libya's leader, Moammar Gaddafi, and Charles Taylor, formerly a Liberian warlord and now the country's president. Crane would not say whether Gaddafi or Taylor would be indicted. But because Taylor is named extensively in the seven public indictments as a key participant in the criminal enterprise, many people here expect he will face charges.

Crane said that, in the course of the investigations, he has uncovered evidence that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network is buying diamonds in Sierra Leone. The ties were first reported by The Washington Post 17 months ago but dismissed by the CIA in subsequent congressional questioning.

Crane said his investigators could link the diamond trade to al Qaeda "by name, and it is very specific evidence of al Qaeda ties to the blood diamonds of West Africa." Crane said his team also uncovered evidence that various other terrorist and criminal groups were involved in or benefited from the diamond trade, but said they were not the focus of his investigations because none of those groups ultimately fueled the conflict.

In the first indictments, the court focused on the senior tier of the RUF and Kamajor militias. RUF commanders Issa Sesay and Morris Kallon were arrested in a sting operation that drew them to the capital. The group's founder, Foday Sankoh, and one of his lieutenants, Alex Tamba Brima, known by many as Gullit for his penchant for slitting throats, were already in prison and transferred to custody of the court.

Also arrested was Hinga Norman, leader of the anti-RUF Kamajor militias. Norman was serving as interior minister, making him one of the most powerful people in the country. At the court's request, police surrounded his office without advising the government, held his guards in a separate room and whisked him away.

All were charged with terrorizing the civilian population, unlawful killings, sexual violence and sexual slavery, use of child soldiers and slavery. Norman was also charged with human sacrifice and cannibalism.

No pleas have been entered yet. Public defenders will be provided if defendants cannot afford their own attorneys. Trials are due to start by August. The maximum punishment the court can order is life in prison. A three-panel judge will hear the evidence and determine a verdict by majority vote. A separate chamber of five judges will hear appeals, with majority decisions binding. The appellate court's rulings cannot be appealed.

Crane said the court had made two decisions that would shape its operations. The first was not to try anyone younger than 18, even though child soldiers were responsible for many of the worst atrocities. The second was to issue indictments only when the evidence was essentially irrefutable.

Though the court enjoys broad public support, some people complain about its limits. Sieh Mamsareh, whose hand was also hacked off by the RUF, said he wanted the court to punish not only the overall commanders, but the person who mutilated him and killed his family. "I know where he lives, I have seen him with my own eyes, and nothing is happening to him," Mamsareh said. "Why will he not be punished?"

Crane acknowledged that many could ultimately be disappointed. "Some of the people who won't be tried will leave us aghast," Crane said. "We have full knowledge horrible people will walk away. But our mandate is to try those with the greatest responsibility, and that is all we can do."

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