Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi’s government ran a military training camp in Libya in the 1980s that prepared Charles Taylor’s troops to seize power in the West African nation of Liberia, a key witness at Taylor’s war crimes trial testified on Wednesday.
Moses Blah, who served as vice president under Taylor after he came to power in Liberia, is the highest-ranking witness to take the stand against his former boss since his trial began early this year.
Taylor has pleaded not guilty to charges that include murder, rape, torture and enlisting child soldiers during Sierra Leone’s 10-year civil war, which ended in 2002. Prosecutors allege he orchestrated the atrocities from his power base in Liberia’s capital Monrovia.
Blah said he was among about 180 rebels recruited by Taylor and flown to Libya in the late 1980s to undergo months of military training. The fighters learned to use AK-47 assault rifles and surface-to-air missiles at a military camp near Tripoli, he said.
Rebels from countries including Gambia, the Philippines and Sierra Leone were also at the camp, Blah said.
Taylor’s forces entered Liberia late in 1989, triggering a civil war that lasted years and left thousands dead.
After Taylor grabbed power in Liberia, Qaddafi continued to support him, Blah said, sending Taylor’s regime a shipment of crude oil to sell so the proceeds could be used to buy “military hardware.”
Blah was subpoenaed to testify and had originally been slated to give evidence anonymously, but he later decided to speak in open court despite a death threat e-mailed to his family.
In an example of the brutality of the conflict in Liberia Blah said one rebel commander, “had a habit of eating fellow human beings” and that fighters only joined his unit if they were prepared to take part in cannibalism.
Blah said he once visited the commander, Nelxon Gaye at a camp in a rubber plantation and found him roasting human hands. “He did it over a fire and he ate it with boiled cassava.”
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS