Crimes against humanity in Liberia: first trial in France in the fall

The trial of a former Liberian rebel commander, the first in France for crimes during the civil war in Liberia, is scheduled before the Paris assizes from October 10 to November 4, AFP learned on Friday February 18 from a judicial source.

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Kunti Kamara, 47, will be tried for "

" and "

" constituting crimes against humanity, in 1993 and 1994, during this conflict which killed some 250,000 people between 1989 and 2003 This will be the first trial in France on atrocities committed during Liberia's civil war.

Outside the borders of this West African country, other trials have been held.

Accused of looting and rape

Former rebel leader Gibril Massaquoi, a Sierra Leonean citizen who has lived in Finland since 2008, appeared in 2021 for a series of murders, rapes and acts of torture perpetrated in Liberia between 1999 and 2003, in a trial marked by an unprecedented relocation in this West African country.

The verdict is expected in March or April.

In Switzerland, a former Liberian rebel commander, Alieu Kosiah, was sentenced in June 2021 to 20 years in prison for war crimes.

Born on December 1, 1974, Kunti Kamara was a commander in ULIMO (United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy), a faction of three armed groups hostile to the movement of former Liberian President Charles Taylor (the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, NPFL), during the first civil war that shook this country.

Head of a faction in Lofa County, a strategic region in northwestern Liberia, he was accused by several victims of having committed looting and rape and enslaving local populations.

He is also suspected of having tortured, killed and committed acts of cannibalism.

Kunti Kamara disputes these accusations.

This naturalized Dutch Liberian national, who arrived in France in 2016, was the subject of an investigation after a complaint filed in July 2018 by the NGO Civitas Maxima.

Targeted by an arrest warrant, he was arrested in the Paris region in September 2018 and indicted.

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Kunti Kamara's trial will be the first to be heard by the crimes against humanity division of the Paris court, created in 2012, which is not linked to the Rwandan genocide.

It is by virtue of its "

" that French justice can prosecute the perpetrators of the most serious crimes - crimes against humanity, war or genocide - if they pass through or reside on French territory, regardless of be the location of the crimes and the nationality of the perpetrators or victims.