A Sierra Leonean man who has lived in Finland for more than ten years is charged with, among other things, murder, rape and a felony of war in the Liberian Civil War in 1999–2003.
Prosecutor calls for the man indicted in the Liberia war crimes trial to be sentenced primarily to life imprisonment.
A Sierra Leonean man who has lived in Finland for more than ten years is charged with, among other things, murder, rape and a felony of war in the Liberian Civil War in 1999–2003. Gibril Massaquoi, 52, has denied all charges.
“In our view, it has been established in the main proceedings that Massaquoi has committed murder and must therefore be sentenced primarily to life imprisonment. If the court finds that this is not the case and the offense is a serious war crime and a serious violation of human rights in exceptional circumstances, the most severe penalty provided for them is 12 years. Given that the acts involve crimes against life, he must be sentenced to 15 years in prison, ”the public prosecutor Tom Laitinen said in court the last day of the hearing on Monday.
The trial in the Pirkanmaa District Court lasted almost a year. The court aims to reach a verdict on the matter by the end of April. Massaquoi has been in pre-trial detention since March 2020. On Monday, at the end of the trial, the district court ruled that he would also remain in custody for the time being.
On Monday the final statement of Massaquoi’s defense was also heard in the district court. The evidence in the case is largely based on what the witnesses say, and Massaquoin’s lawyer Charles Gummerus there are several problems with finding witnesses and the reliability of their accounts.
Massaquo is accused of committing crimes in the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel group in Sierra Leone, where prosecutors also used the name Angel Gabriel. In their closing statement on Friday, prosecutors calculated that more than 60 witnesses have named Massaquo or Angel Gabriel as the perpetrator.
The defense has criticized, among other things, the fact that the Central Criminal Police (CPC) was assisted in finding witnesses in Liberia by a local activist whose defense has suspected at least led witnesses to identify Massaquo.
According to the defense, the man also made practical preliminary testimony to witnesses that could be considered pre-trial measures.
“We don’t have clarity about what he’s talked to people. In other words, a person who does not work with police training or official responsibility and whose activities cannot be clarified has taken part in the investigation. He may have meant quite a good thing, but that doesn’t justify using that kind of person, ”Gummerus said.
Public Prosecutor According to Laitinen, the krp asked the man for help because it was the only way to connect with local people who had experienced the war.
“The situation doesn’t change by stating that such a person was needed. Nothing would have prevented one of the police from going with him on these trips and recording things correctly, ”Gummerus said.
Gummerus also went through the man’s notebook, which, according to him, shows that the man had also given false information about his activities to the CPC and had mentioned, for example, the RUF to witnesses he had met, even though he had not.
“Judging by the level of speeches he has made, one hundred percent of the contacts he has made through the police have been able to name my principal or Angel Gabriel. No single “hut” has come through him, ”Gummerus said.
However, according to Gummerus, the defense does not claim that a group of people were gathered to lie about Massaquo.
“It simply came to our notice then. There have been witnesses who have obviously lied. But most of the stories have probably only been prone to memory distortion over the past 20 years. ”
Defense has drawn attention to the fact that Massaquo was not identified as a perpetrator by the witnesses who were first heard in the case, but the percentage of witnesses who were subsequently heard approached one hundred.
According to Gummerus, the first undisputed identification in the pre-trial investigation was made only in December 2019, almost nine months after the interrogations had begun and information about the investigation had begun to spread.
“I find it pretty clear that after interrogations have been carried out in the areas of Monrovia (the capital of Liberia) and Lofa (in northern Liberia) more than half a year earlier, puskaradio has been launched. I don’t mean anything bad, but when it comes to such an exceptional thing, people talk about their experiences and things. ”
According to the defense, over time, people’s memories may have mixed with things they have heard from other people or seen in the media, for example.
“There is such a detail that throughout the investigation, no one heard outside of Monrovia has identified Massaquo from the photographs. All we can really say about this is that in Monrovia the internet works well and in Lofa it works occasionally in a couple of places, ”Gummerus said.
The defense has also wondered how numerous witnesses in the Finnish investigation named Massaquo when he did not appear in the post-war investigations in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Defense has criticized, in particular, the way in which some witnesses changed their account of the events in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, from pre – trial to trial.
According to Gummerus, witnesses who were initially heard during the pre-trial investigation said Massaquoi had been committing crimes in Monrovia in the summer of 2003. When defense testified 2002.
Last summer, the situation changed once again, with prosecutors saying new witnesses said Massaquoi had been seen in Monrovia in the summer of 2003. Prior to the trial, an expert had been heard saying that the events described by the witnesses were not possible before summer 2003.
“It was the most expensive comment in the trial. There was a compelled need for (the prosecutor) to extend the time to trial to bring new witnesses to the case, as it was clear that the prosecution would not succeed with the allegations from 2001-2002, ”Gummerus said.
In neighboring countries There were bloody civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia in the 1990s and early 2000s. Massaquoi held a high and influential position in the RUF, which fought in addition to his homeland in Liberia for president Charles Taylorin with. Taylor was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2012.
However, according to the defense, over the years, Massaquo’s leadership in the RUF has cooled, and in 2002, after the end of the civil war in Sierra Leone, he vowed to testify against the RUF in a special court to investigate the atrocities of the war. As a result, he was granted witness protection and later moved to Finland under a treaty between Finland and a special court.
The charges brought in Finland concern crimes that Massaquoin is accused of on the Liberian side in the ranks of the RUF. The defense, on the other hand, says Massaquoi was the president of the RUF at the time of the alleged crimes in the peace talks and did not even visit Liberia after June 2001.
Krp launched an investigation into Massaquo in 2018. Prior to that, the Finnish authorities had received information about his alleged actions from the Swiss NGO Civitas Maxima, which investigates war crimes, and its Liberian sister organization, Global Justice and Research Project.
The STT will exceptionally state the name of Massaquoi already at the district stage due to the exceptional seriousness of the criminal suspicions and the status of the man.
Read more: Prosecutor defended CPP’s pre-trial investigation and witnesses who altered his accounts in the Liberia war crimes trial: “It would take some screenwriter to stage Massaquo”
Read more: Liberia war crimes trial drags on: Pirkanmaa District Court travels to West Africa for the second time to hear witnesses
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