Mr. Gibril Massaquoi was acquitted by a Finnish Appeals Court in January 2024, ending a marathon trial.
The Finnish government has awarded €390,000 ($US426,00) in compensation to Gibril Massaquoi, the former Sierra Leonean rebel leader acquitted in January of war crimes and crimes against humanity prosecutors said he committed during Liberia’s second civil war between 1999-2003.
The payment covers Mr. Massaquoi’s loss of liberty and income during the protracted judicial process, which spanned four years.
By Anthony Stephens with New Narratives
But Kaarle Gummerus, lawyer for Mr. Massaquoi, said the money isn’t enough. He said his client deserves more than $US1million.
“We demanded compensation for the loss of liberty of €1,000 per day,” said Mr. Gummerus by WhatsApp. “The state paid €400 per day.”
Mr. Gummerus did not respond to follow-up questions asking if Mr. Massaquoi’s intends to challenge the Finnish Treasury’s decision, as well as granting an interview with Mr. Massaquoi. The award adds to the nearly $US2 million the Finnish government spent on the entire case.
A Finnish appeals court acquitted Mr. Massaquoi in January, finding that, although prosecutors had convinced the judges that the crimes had occurred, prosecutors did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Massaquoi was the perpetrator. The appeals court hearings, like the hearings of the original trial, lasted more than a year and included months of hearings in Liberia. The lower court had also gone to Sierra Leone where Mr. Massaquoi had been held in a U.N. safehouse at the time of some of the alleged crimes, while he was testifying against former Liberian President Charles Taylor and other RUF leaders, in the judicial proceedings that would lead into the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Prosecutors in Mr. Massaquoi’s trial had anchored their argument on the theory that he had escaped the safehouse between July and August of 2003 to back up Taylor’s government troops in their battle against rebels from the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) as they and another rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, advanced through Lofa County to Monrovia.
Massaquoi was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, including rape, torture and murder. Witnesses told Massaquoi’s hearings that he had committed the crimes in Monrovia and Lofa County, in Liberia’s northern region. In Monrovia, he was accused of gathering civilians in warehouses and shooting them or ordering his soldiers to do so for allegedly looting stores at Waterside. Witnesses separately told the courts that Massaquoi had also set houses on fire in Kiatahum Town, killing the families who resided in them. They said in some instances, he ordered his soldiers to commit the crimes.
The Court of Appeal of Finland said the evidence it had “evaluated as a whole, suggests rather convincingly that Mr. Massaquoi had not been in Liberia when the offences in Monrovia referred to in the charges had been committed” and that it was “fairly unlikely that Mr. Massaquoi had been involved in the above-mentioned acts of torture in Klay.”
Inconsistencies in the testimonies of witnesses about the names that Mr. Massaquoi allegedly used during the war to commit the atrocities was a key part of the Finnish Court of Appeal’s ruling. Many of the more than 80 Liberian witnesses claimed that he was “Angel Gabriel.” But a Human Rights Watch researcher said survivors of the alleged atrocities interviewed later had not mentioned an “Angel Gabriel.”
Hassan Bility is director of the Global Justice and Research Project (GJRP), which, alongside its Swiss partner, Civitas Maxima, filed the formal complaint against Mr. Massaquoi. It led Finnish police to undertake the investigation that convinced Finnish prosecutors to bring the case against the former rebel who had been relocated to Finland in exchange for his testimony to the Special Court. Bility said they were not surprised by the Treasury’s decision.
“It was the Finnish who prosecuted him, and it was their decision to award him monetary/financial compensation. That’s good for him,” said Bility in a WhatsApp message. “I don’t see this as a setback, but a victory. It proves the system is working. Even the ICC [International Criminal Court] lost the cases of Laurent Gbagbo and Charles Ble Goude of Ivory Coast, as well as Jean Pierre Bemba of DR Congo. That’s the nature of this work: you win some, you lose some. That’s the reality.”
Bility continued: “My disappointment is for the victims of the crimes and how they will feel. Justice is not only about conviction, it’s also about acquittal. That’s a fact. I feel sorry for the victims of these grave crimes. I feel like the victims have been defenestrated. In any case, we do respect the decision of the Finish court.”
To date, the case is the only trial that GJRP and Civitas have been associated with and lost. They’ve won four other war-related crimes trials in European and American courts. More cases are pending in the US and Europe. The two NGOs have been behind dozens of American- and European-led investigations, which have culminated in arrests, charges, or indictments. GJRP has also worked with the American organization Center for Justice and Accountability on the successful civil case against Moses Thomas for the Lutheran Church Massacre and a case in an Ecowas court against the Liberian government.
GJRP and Civitas have faced repeated allegations from critics, including accused ex-warlords, of witness tampering, particularly bribery and coaching. But the accusers have provided no evidence to support their allegations. Investigators in multiple European jurisdictions and the United States have not found evidence to support the allegations. As well as criticism, the two organizations have won admiration from leading justice advocates, with the latest coming from Beth Van Schaack, the US Ambassador for Global Criminal Justice, who dismissed the allegations as “unsubstantiated.”
Aside from challenging his prosecution in Finland, Massaquoi has also sued Bility and Alain Werner, Director of Civitas Maxima, for $US15million in “damages for malicious prosecution/wrong” the Civil Law Court “A” in Monrovia. The case is ongoing.
Cllr. Eugene Massaquoi is Gibril Massaquoi’s Liberian lawyer, according to court records.
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Project.