IPNews-Finland:The much talked about trial of Gibril Massaquoi, a Sierra Leonean man accused of committing war crimes in Liberia, gets underway today, Wednesday, February 3, 2021.

The Pirkanmaa District Court in the Finnish city of Tampere has said Finnish State Prosecutor Tom Laitinen detailed the charges against Massaquoi at a preparatory session on Monday (when the court announces its schedules and plan for translation). Among his charges are murder of civilians, including children and other vulnerable individuals, and rape.

Massaquoi is accused of committing the acts in multiple locations in Liberia, including Lofa County, between January 7, 1999 and March 9, 2003, according to the 20-page indictment.

The main trial will commence on Wednesday. Massaquoi, who is currently held in pretrial detention in Finland, is expected to appear. After two weeks of the proceedings in Finland, the case is expected to be moved to Liberia, the country’s first war crimes trial. He will remain in Finland while the trial is ongoing in Monrovia and make a virtual appearance.

Prosecutors are calling for a life sentence.

In the preliminary response to the charges delivered to the court by his defense, Massaquoi denies all charges, arguing that he was not even in Liberia after June 2001.

Massaquoi, 51, moved to Finland over a decade ago after acting as a key informer for the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). As a top figure within the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), Massaquoi was well-placed to provide information on the group’s inner workings.

In 2018, an investigation into his alleged crimes was launched by Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). He was arrested in March last year, with charges delivered on January 25. NBI said it interviewed several witnesses in Liberia, who it says will testify in the case.

The authoritative Independent Probe Newspaper has established that a man accused of ‘was Crimes’ committed in Liberia, Gibril Massaquoi, might just be a ‘No Guilty Verdict’.

However, IPNews has established that Gibril Massaquoi, is not even a Liberian, but a Sierra Leonian (Sierra Leone), who traded diamonds and other minerals.

IPNews has reliably gathered that Gibril Massaquoi, has been over a decade a middleman in diamond trade between rebels in Sierra Leone, Liberia and western trading partners from Belgium, Switzerland and the United States.

A senior rebel General of the defunct National Patriotic From of Liberia, (name withheld), told IPNews that Gibril Massaquoi, might just walk out of the Swiss Court with a ‘None Guilty Verdict’, because of wrongful filling by Mr. Hassan Bility, his Organization for profiteering.

The Rebel-General challenge Mr. Hassan Bility, to proof what militias Unit was Gibril Massaquoi enlisted.

“Those are all lies this Hassan Bility continue to spill out there to the International Community for money making at the detriment of the image of Liberia. This is totally unacceptable. ” the former rebel General narrated to IPNews.

As signatory to international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions, Finland is obligated to investigate and prosecute international crimes, even if they did not take place on its soil, Laitinen said.

Finland takes its obligations to international law seriously. The case against Massaquoi is exceptional in Finland, but not the only one of its kind. Two Iraqi brothers recently stood trial for war crimes and other offenses allegedly committed in Iraq. They were cleared of charges due to insufficient evidence. Kaarle Gummerus, Massaquoi’s lead lawyer, defended one of the brothers in that trial.

Massaquoi is the third person who is not a Liberian to be prosecuted in over the country’s civil war, which killed an estimated 250,000 and displaced a million. The first was Chuckie Taylor, the American son of former President Charles Taylor, who is serving a 97-year prison for torture in Liberia. And the other is Guus Kowenhoven, a Dutch timber dealer who was found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes in the West African nation in 2017.

A verdict in Massaquoi’s case is expected later this year.

Unlike neighbour Sierra Leone which had its own civil war in the 1990s, Liberian perpetrators have never faced prosecution at home despite a recommendation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to create a war crimes court.

Liberia’s former President Charles Taylor was sentenced in 2012 for war crimes in Sierra Leone, but was never convicted for Liberian acts.

Others arrested in Europe have yet to appear in court.

Former warlords retain positions of power in Liberia and witnesses have been reluctant to come forward amid threats.

“This trial gives hope to victims, to the survivors, and gives voice to the dead,” said Hassan Bility who collected evidence for the case and was himself tortured in the conflict.

Human Rights Watch’s Elise Keppler said she hoped the trial would serve as a “wake-up call” for Liberia.

Liberia was wracked by horrendous civil wars in the 1990s. Various militias are accused of committing gross human rights abuses against unarmed civilians including the intentional dislocation of large sections of the populations.

Following the wars, belligerents agreed to the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which completed its work in June, 2012, submitted its Final Report to the Liberian Government and among several recommendations called for the establishment of a War Crimes Tribunal to prosecute those identified as responsible for gross war and economic crimes.

But The Government of Liberia has been reluctant to implement recommendations of the TRC.

Accused Agnes Taylor Trial:

Being mastermind by the same Hassan Bility, Agnes Reeves-Taylor, 54, was charged in 2017 over a string of offences – some involving children – during the West African country’s civil war.

The university lecturer, from Dagenham in east London, denied wrongdoing and was due to stand trial in January.

But after a technical appeal, judge Mr Justice Sweeney dismissed all charges.

Ms Reeves-Taylor faced a trial for torture and conspiracy to torture relating to events alleged to have taken place in 1990, during Liberia’s bloody civil war.

Up to 250,000 people are believed to have been killed during civil conflict between 1989 and 2003.

Ms Reeves-Taylor’s ex-husband was Liberia’s president from 1997 until 2003 and is currently serving a life sentence for war crimes in Sierra Leone.

However, Mr Justice Sweeney ruled that the case against Taylor’s former wife could no longer continue.

The eight allegations Ms Reeves-Taylor faced concerned events in 1990 as the civil war raged across Liberia.

The charges included conspiracy to commit torture by allegedly facilitating the rape of captive women by soldiers in Charles Taylor’s forces (National Patriotic Front of Liberia)
It was further alleged that three of the torture allegations related to inflicting “severe pain or suffering”, including assaults on a 13-year-old boy.
The Old Bailey had also heard that one allegation of torture related to a “pastor’s wife” who had resisted being raped by one of Charles Taylor’s commanders. Mr Justice Sweeney said the evidence of that allegation was that Ms Reeves-Taylor “ordered that the woman be tied [in a manner that caused pain amounting to torture]. The defendant then shot and killed the woman’s two young children, saying ‘See if you refuse an order this will happen’.”
She had denied she had been involved in any crimes.

In his ruling, Mr Justice Sweeney said: “I have asked myself in relation to each count whether there is sufficient evidence taken at its reasonable height upon which a jury could properly conclude that at the time and location of each offence, the NPFL [Charles Taylor’s forces] was exercising governmental function in the relevant area.

“In my view the answer in each instance is clearly in the negative.”

Ms Reeves-Taylor smiled as she appeared in a video link from Bronzefield women’s prison in Surrey to hear the ruling.

Detectives at the Metropolitan Police’s war crimes unit began looking into her background in 2014 after receiving allegations from investigators working for two justice campaign groups in West Africa.

The business lecturer was then arrested and charged in June 2017.

Since then she has fought to have the case dropped – and her lawyers have previously told the court that she had no official position in Charles Taylor’s regime.

Ms Reeves-Taylor has lived in the UK since 1998 but her future is now uncertain.

Some of those accused in the report including former rebel warlord turned Senator Prince Y. Johnson of the Independent National Patriotic Front (INPFL) have angrily rejected any attempts to bring them to justice and have vowed to resist the establishment of a War Crimes Tribunal in the West African country. The main rebel leader Charles Taylor turned former President Charles Taylor was forced from office, later arrested, prosecuted and convicted on 11 counts of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity for supporting rebels who carried out atrocities in Sierra Leone in return for “blood diamonds”. He is presently serving a 50 year jail term.

The reluctance of the new Weah Government to commit to fully implementing the recommendations of the TRC, in spite of calls the local rights groups and the international community, has led to a campaign to support the establishment of a War Crimes Tribunal in Liberia.

There is a growing support for proposed Congressional House Bill 1055 in the U.S. for the establishment of a War Crimes Tribunal.

Recently Rights groups including the Movement for Justice in Liberia (MOJL) and the International Justice Group (IJG) led supporters to the office of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and presented a statement in which they said, “… we are equally optimistic that Resolution 1055 will be a reality, War and Economic Crimes Court for Liberia will be a success story, and corruption and impunity will become history. It is only when we achieve these milestones, will we become an economically, socially and politically vibrant nation..”

Already, some supporters of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) led Government are accusing rights groups of supporting the “economic strangulation” of the Weah government by their statement to U.S. House Speaker Pelosi.

Several Liberian war actors including former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Tom Woweiyu, Agnes Reeves Taylor and Martina Johnson are facing international justice. Mohammed “Jungle Jabbah” Jabateh, a former ULIMO rebel commander, is currently serving a 30 year prison term on immigration fraud charges in the U.S.

Sealed indictments have been drawn up against some Liberians which have been accused of war and economic crimes in Liberia.

Others accused of committing atrocities and who fled the country are living under assumed names in parts of Africa, Europe and the United States. One of such persons is a former commander in the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) who, in the early days of the rebel invasion in Liberia, led a death squad that murdered a prominent Liberian architect and Mayor of the suburban city of Clay Ashland, Mayor Mr. R. Vanjah Richards. At the time, the Defense Ministry in Liberia said Major Johnson and his men “deviated from their mission”. Johnson later disappeared from Liberia.

IPNews has been reliably informed by credible sources that the accused, Henry K. Johnson, is hiding out in the U.S.

International investigators say they will continue to pursue accused Liberia war and economic criminals and bring them to justice or bring justice to them.

Liberia’s war crimes court campaigner Hassan Bility is being dragged in the mud, as some Liberians linked him to membership with one of the country’s warring factions United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy or ULIMO, but he denies.

For detail on the rebel operations of Hassan Bility, read: https://thenewdawnliberia.com/war-crimes-advocate-faces-rebel-link/