THE HAGUE (AFP) — A former rebel from Liberia described the atrocities that he and and other fighters carried out under the command of Charles Taylor, at the Liberian ex-president's war crimes trial Wednesday.
Joseph Marzah told judges at the Special Court for Sierra Leone how he personally had killed more than a hundred people during his time with Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) -- including babies.
"It's not hard," said Marzah. "You hit them against the wall, throw them in a pit, or in the river, and they are dead. And then you give the report to Charles Taylor."
Marzah said he had been part of a special unit that Taylor had set up called "No Baby on Target", adding: "He said we should execute any baby we saw. After we did that, he gave us money."
Fighters had also used knives to cut open pregnant women, he added.
The special court is pursuing Taylor on 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone, all of which he denies.
Taylor, 59, is accused of arming, training and controlling the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in Sierra Leone in exchange for still-unknown amounts of diamonds.
Around 120,000 people were killed in the conflict, and thousands more were raped and mutilated with rebels cutting off arms, legs, ears or noses.
At the time covered by the charges in the indictment, Marzah was a fighter in Taylor's rebel group in Liberia which controlled a large part of the country before Taylor was elected president in 1997 and went by the nom-de-guerre Zigzag.
Marzah told the court how he also crossed the border and took part in the bloody attacks of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels on villages in eastern Sierra Leone, and how he joined their ranks while still taking orders from Taylor.
Marzah talked at length about how both Taylor's men in Liberia and in neighbouring Sierra Leone terrorised civilians.
During the war in Liberia they would mount ambushes on civilians, said Marzah.
"At the checkpoint we used human intestines and sometimes put heads on sticks to scare people," he said. And the same thing went on in Sierra Leone, he added.
Both Sierra Leone's RUF rebels and the Liberian fighters of the NPFL operated under Taylor's command, he said.
There was no RUF as such, he said. "From Freetown to Liberia there was one organisation, all answering to Taylor."
Taylor was in constant touch with the RUF leaders by satellite telephone and radio links, said Marzah.
Some of those leaders frequently visited the Liberian capital Monrovia to deliver diamonds, receive their orders and pick up weapons.
Prosecutors accused Taylor of having amassed a 600-million-dollar (385-million-euro) fortune.
Marzah told the court Taylor ordered him to take arms to Sierra Leone rebels and exchange them for diamonds.
In the early 1990s he went to Sierra Leone some 40 times with transports carrying AK-47 assault rifles and rockets.
"Sometimes, we got ammunition from White Flower (Taylor's presidential residence) or a Russian plane," said Marzah, 49.
"By Charles Taylor's directive, I sometimes would take some straight to Sierra Leone," he added.
Asked by prosecutor Nicholas Koumjian if he ever saw diamonds, Marzah replied: "Many times. I escorted diamonds to Charles Taylor. He himself can tell you that if he tells the truth," he said.
He told the court he had personally brought some 10 to 15 consignments of diamonds to Taylor.
He recalled one diamond in particular that was around five centimetres (two inches) in diameter.
"At that time, we called (it) father'. When he took it along, Charles Taylor was impressed," Marzah said.
Taylor's trial before the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone was moved from Freetown to The Hague because there were fears his presence there could destabilize the region.
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