The judge said prosecutors had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Massaquoi committed the crimes of rape, ritual murder, torture and recruitment of child soldiers during the war.
A court in Finland has acquitted Gibril Massaquoi, the former Revolutionary United Front commander in Sierra Leone, of all the charges in his year-long trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity during Liberia’s civil war between 1999-2003.
In an 850-page ruling, judges of the District Court in the city of Tampere said prosecutors had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Massaquoi, 52, committed the crimes of rape, ritual murder, torture and recruitment of child soldiers during the war.
Kaarle Gummerus, Massaquoi’s lawyer, said his was “extremely relieved” by the judgement and is now waiting to see whether the prosecution decides to appeal the decision.
“We’ll wait a month to see what decision the prosecutor makes with this case and then we’ll be able to see what the next six months will be like,” he told AFP.
The ruling is a blow to the prosecution team and Finnish police investigators who spent years and more than a $US million building the case.
Tom Laitinen, chief prosecutor in the trial, defended his team’s actions in a WhatsApp message.
“My initial reaction is that despite the outcome, the trial in itself is an achievement for us and for justice. The next step for us is to read the judgement thoroughly to see if we can share the conclusions of the court,” Laitinen said, referring to the voluminous verdict.
Laitinen said after digesting the ruling, the team will make a determination on the question of an appeal.
Under Finnish law, the prosecution must lodge an appeal within a week of the verdict and then complete the appeal process within three weeks later.
Friday’s verdict came more than two months after the court released Massaquoi from pretrial detention—a decision that raised eyebrows within the human rights community and many saw as a sign the court would acquit.
The outcome is also a setback for the two human rights groups that brought the initial evidence against Massaquoi to Finnish investigators, Swiss based Civitas Maxima and its Liberian counterpart, the Global Justice and Research Project.
The two groups have worked together to gather evidence in more than a dozen cases against accused Liberian warlords in six countries in the last decade including successful prosecutions of Charles Taylor’s number two Thomas Woewiyu and ULIMO commanders Alieu Kosiah and Mohammed Jabbateh.
This is the first case bought by the two groups that has ended in the acquittal.
Defence teams in all cases have tried to undermine the credibility of the two organisations, particularly Hassan Billity, the Liberian justice activist who heads GJRP.
The groups have been the targets of a disinformation campaign apparently coordinated by some of the people they have brought evidence against.
This was the first trial in which Billity himself testified that he had been a victim of the accused.
The Massaquoi trial saw three witnesses come forward to claim that Billity had offered them bribes to testify.
The witnesses provided no evidence and their claims were undermined when Milton Blahyi, another former warlord allegedly offered a bribe by Billity, rejected the accusation.
It also emerged that Alan White, the chief prosecutor of the Special Court, had called all three witnesses prior to their testimony. Had Massaquoi been found guilty, the Special Court’s witness protection program and even some of its convictions, may have faced heavy scrutiny.
In a statement the two groups defended their actions.
“Civitas Maxima and the Global Justice and Research Project believe the testimonies of the victims. This has been a peculiar trial for both organisations: Hassan Bility, director of GJRP, had already given evidence during the Charles Taylor trial in January 2009 implicating Gibril Massaquoi in the acts of torture he suffered in 2002. He testified again about those events at the Gibril Massaquoi trial. Both Civitas Maxima and the GJRP firmly support Hassan Bility, who for years has tirelessly worked towards justice and accountability”.
Special court safehouse security under scrutiny
Massaquoi was a top commander in the Sierra Leonean rebel group the Revolutionary United Front which was found to have committed widespread human rights violations, including murder and rape by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Massaquoi was said to be a key informant in the conviction of former Liberian President Charles Taylor and other former RUF leaders in the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Convicted of aiding and abetting the RUF in Sierra Leone’s civil war, Taylor, is serving a 50-year sentence in a United Kingdom prison for his role.
Massqauoi and some family members moved to Finland in 2008 under a deal with the Special Court that did not involve immunity from prosecution.
He was arrested there in March 2020 after Civitas Maxima and GJRP presented what they said was evidence that he committed war crimes in Liberia to Finnish prosecutors.
Massaquoi denied the charges.
His trial formally began in Feburary 2021 in Finland and the court spent 6 months in Liberia and Sierra Leone hearing testimony from dozens of witnesses.
The Liberian witnesses mostly linked Massaquoi to the crimes, including ordering the torching of houses full of civilians in villages in Lofa County and killings, torture and rape at Waterside Market in Monrovia.
The trial took a dramatic turn in September 2021 when the defence presented evidence that Billity and his team had bribed witnesses compelling the court to return to Liberia to hear from additional witnesses.
The dates of the original indictment also need to change after it became clear the witnesses had been referencing events that took place in Liberia between June and August in 2003 when Massaquoi was in a UN monitored safe house in Freetown.
The prosecution was compelled to make the difficult case that security at the safehouse was so lax that Massaquoi could have escaped and crossed into Liberia to commit war crimes on behalf of Taylor, the very man against whom he was informing to the Special Court.
Inconsistencies
In the end the inconsistencies were too great for the judges to rule that Massaquoi had committed the crimes beyond the legal burden of “a reasonable doubt”.
Civitas Maxima and GJRP insisted the trial has made some impact on the transitional justice process, despite Massaquoi’s acquittal.
“A complex case of intertwined conflicts with a former insider witness of an international court, the Massaquoi trial will surely become an important reference on the concrete challenges of universal jurisdiction,” said the two groups in the statement. “And the Finnish experience will be an important case study for other countries who are committed to the principle.”
Source: www.premiumtimesng.com/
By Anthony Stephens and New Narratives