Liberia: “No Doubt Whatsoever, That is Him,” Victim Tells Judge in Paris War Crimes Trial

Kunti Kamara is confronted by an alleged victim in day 5 of his Paris trial. Credit: Leslie Lumeh/New Narratives

By Prue Clarke

The trial of Kunti Kamara for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Paris took a dramatic turn late Friday as the presiding judge in the trial asked a witness if the man he had described committing multiple atrocities, including killing four members of his family, was in the court. 

“Yes,” said the victim turning to look directly at Kamara who was in a protective glass box.  “That is him.”

The victim was standing less than 10 feet from Kamara who was also asked to stand. Neither man betrayed what must have been deep turmoil at, what the victim alleges, is their first meeting since 1993 in very different circumstances. 

The last time they met in Foya, Lofa County, Kamara had the power to take his life at any minute according to the victim, just as he had taken the victim’s brother’s life by shooting him in the head while he was standing next to him. And his sister’s life when he ordered her baby torn from her back before she was slashed to death.  

Judge Thierry Fusina, the Court President, asked the victim if he was sure Kamara, now 48, was the man responsible five times.

The victim did not waiver. “No doubt whatsoever that is him,” he said.

Kamara, who was not allowed to respond, looked straight at his accuser with an expression of bemusement, seemingly unable to comprehend the gravity of the moment. 

Sabrina Delattre, lawyer for the civil parties representing the victims at the trial, asked the victim if he had anything to say to Kamara.

“Kunti, for whatever you did in Foya, this is the time for justice in order for the minds of people to rest,” the victim said in a calm, clear voice.

Kamara in court with his lawyer and translator. Credit: Leslie Lumeh/New Narratives

The moment was a poignant one for justice activists and journalists who have covered the four trials of Liberians and a Sierra Leonean on charges related to the Liberian wars, including John Stewart, the former Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner who was in the court. It was the first time that a victim was given the chance to address the accused perpetrator directly.

Outside the court the victim said he felt tremendous relief. He said he had been given notice that he might have the chance to address Kamara directly and prepared his statement with the four members of his family and many others killed and maimed in his community in mind. 

In another riveting moment Kamara was given a chance to respond to the allegations that had been made by four alleged victims throughout the day. The Paris Court, in the latest of a long list of unusual protocols that has surprised court watchers, will invite Kamara to respond at the end of each day that includes his accusers.

Kamara has admitted that he was a member of Ulimo previously but today he conceded that he had been in Lofa during the events described by the victim and had been one of the Ulimo rebels who searched for the Lofa chief Tamba Taylor who, he claimed, was hiding in the bush with an NPFL commander named General Fayiah and 500 civilians whom the general was using as a “human shield”. Kamara denied the victim’s accusation that he was in charge. 

“I was one of the group that brought him to Foya but I was not the one who was responsible,” Kamara said.

John Stewart, former TRC Commissioner outside the Paris trial of Kunti Kamara with New Narratives’ Anthony Stephens

Earlier in the day a woman and her daughter described the murder of her husband, a schoolteacher, allegedly by a Ulimo commander named “Ugly Boy” at the direction of Kamara. After Ulimo destroyed a church and a school in the area, a humanitarian organization including Europeans had visited the town. The schoolteacher translated for the group and when they asked who destroyed the buildings, he told them it was Kamara and Ulimo.

In retaliation, Kamara is alleged to have imprisoned the teacher for several days, tying his elbows behind his back in the Tabe torture method, before ordering Ugly Boy to kill him by chopping open his rib cage. Kamara ordered them to cook his heart and eat it. 

None of the witnesses had seen the killing directly, but the man’s brother-in-law testified that he buried the teacher’s body some days later and that his rib cage had been chopped open. The mother and sister described the hardship they had all suffered in the year’s since the schoolteacher’s death. 

“He loved me,” the schoolteacher’s wife wept as she described how tired she was of carrying the burden of being a single parent for the thirty years since. She also said she was tired of “talking to white people” about the murder and never seeing any outcome from it. 

The daughter, “10 to 12” at the time of her father’s murder, lost contact with her mother and siblings as they all escaped the village and went to Guinea after the murder. Alone, at a checkpoint, she said she had been gang-raped. It took many years before she was reunited with her mother in a Sierra Leone refugee camp. 

She too asked why she should testify again.

“Why should I explain my story to them? Because nothing will happen. My father will not come back to life. He already died for saying the truth,” she said wearing a blanket over her lappa and socks under her flip flops to protect her from the Paris cold.

“The only thing I want is if these people will help by giving us justice,” she said. “For what happened in Foya, I never heard about it. What happened in other parts but not in Foya. Someone living they cut people in pieces while you’re standing. They put you in boiling water. They ask you to put your hand down. While you’re standing they cut it while you’re standing looking at it,” she said running through many of the horrors that marked the war. 

“I don’t want that kind of war to happen again,” she said. “I know the pain I went through after the death of my father. I don’t want others to go through it.”

Kunti Kamara’s trial continues on Monday with more witnesses scheduled to testify about the murder of the schoolteacher.

This story is a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project.