Interpreter, did the accused answer the question?” Responding to nearly a hundred questions, Kosiah denounced a "conspiracy" led by Swiss NGO Civitas Maxima and its Liberian partner the Global Justice and Research Project (GJRP), who after learning of his presence in Switzerland gathered testimonies and pushed for prosecution. He went there shortly after Charles Taylor was elected president of Liberia in 1997, to escape the inter-ethnic violence affecting his Mandingo community.Īs the trial opened on December 3, Federal Criminal Court president Jean-Luc Bacher put some preliminary questions, then moved to questioning Kosiah before later giving the floor to the public prosecutor and defence. And so he is being tried years later under universal jurisdiction in Switzerland, his second country of exile.
According to the prosecution, he "ordered his troops to commit, between 19, in Lofa County, murders of civilians, rape and acts aimed at enslaving and terrorizing the population". There he joined the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) rebel movement, in whose ranks he then rose. Kosiah was a child, he says, when he first went into exile in Sierra Leone.
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