Video: Gold mining faces a cliff after 2025, CRU analyst predicts
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Liberian ex-president, Charles Taylor, was convicted today of war crimes for arming Sierra Leone’s rebels in return for blood diamonds during the 1991-2002 civil war by a United Nations-backed court.
The verdict, which followed five years of deliberations by judges of the Special Court of Sierra Leone just outside The Hague, is considered historic, as it is the first time an African head of state is found guilty by an international tribunal.
“The sentence will be pronounced on May 30,” presiding judge Richard Lussick told the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), shortly after delivering the guilty verdict.
The United Nations human rights chief, Navi Pillay, qualified the verdict as “major milestone” in the development of international justice. In a news release, she said that “it is important to recognise that Taylor may appeal the verdict, and that his guilt is not fully established until the end of the judicial process.”
Talylor, who ruled Liberia from 1997 to 2003, guilty of “sustained and significant” support for the rebels who engaged in a long campaign of terror, murder, rape, sexual slavery and enlistment of child soldiers, as stated in a press release by the SCSL.
More than 50,000 people died in the Sierra Leone’s conflict, several at the hands of children drugged on mixtures of cocaine and gunpowder, applied directly into their blood stream through particular cuts on their arms.
The rebels backed by Taylor became particularly known for slashing off the limbs of their alleged opponents and carving words onto their bodies.
In 1997, Taylor’s assistants supposedly gave some of those blood diamonds to British supermodel Naomi Campbell, after a dinner hosted by Nelson Mandela, then South Africa’s president, according to the supermodel’s testimony. Campbell told the court that Taylor’s aides had given her what looked like “dirty stones”.
Taylor could now face life in a British maximum-security prison.
What are blood diamonds?
According to the World Diamond council, conflict or “blood” diamonds are illegally traded rocks used mainly to fund conflict in war-torn areas, particularly in central and western Africa.
The United Nations defines conflict diamonds as “…diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and internationally recognized governments, and are used to fund military action in opposition to those governments, or in contravention of the decisions of the Security Council.”
(Photo: Charles Taylor in court, from Youtube)
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