In a twist of irony, Naomi Campbell is making war crimes allegations against former Liberian President, Charles Taylor, yet doesn’t want to talk about it. In an interview with ABC News, she stormed out, knocking over a camera, just for good measure.
“Even prosecutors in the Hague for the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone say Campbell has refused their requests to be interviewed about the allegations that they say could help directly link Taylor, the former president of Liberia, to the possession of uncut diamonds used to fuel a campaign of terror in Sierra Leone between 1997 and 2001.”
Diamonds are big business in Sierra Leone. Blood diamonds are diamonds which serve wartime purposes. Specifically used to finance insurgencies or warlords’ activities.
In fact, former Liberian president Charles Taylor was accused by the UN in 2000 of supporting the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) insurgency in neighboring Sierra Leone with weapons and training in exchange for diamonds. Now that he is facing trials charging him with 11 counts of murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers and terrorism, he has stepped down as president.
So where do the supermodel and the actress fit into all of this? Taylor allegedly gave Campbell blood diamonds at a party in South Africa in 1997. Mia Farrow also attended the party, and claims that Campbell told her about the gift later. Prosecutors say the testimony would give “direct evidence of Taylor’s possession of rough diamonds from a witness unrelated to the Liberian or Sierra Leone conflicts.”
Taylor was once one of West Africa’s most powerful men. An estimated 500,000 people were the victims of killings, systematic mutilation or other atrocities in that war, with some of the worst crimes committed by child soldiers who were drugged to desensitize them.
I don’t blame her. I don’t think I’d want to testify either.
c. 2010
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