Kunti Kamara, a former commander of the Liberian rebels, will begin his trial in a Paris court on Monday. Kamara is accused of rape, murder, and torture committed during the nation’s first civil war in the 1990s and is facing trial under universal jurisdiction, an international law that acknowledges that the prosecution of some crimes transcends all borders. He disputes the charges. In 2018, Kamara was detained in France.
“Since the start, Mr Kunti Kamara has indicated that he has nothing to do with these events, that he is not involved in the crimes he’s accused of,” his lawyer is quoted as saying by French state-owned television France 24.
Since the special crimes against humanity tribunal was established in Paris in 2012, this is the first trial in France of a non-Rwandan person charged with wartime atrocities.
The leader of a rebel group in the north of the west African nation that was torn apart by two civil wars between 1989 and 2003, during which an estimated 250,000 people perished, was Kunti Kamara, also known as Kunti K, a naturalized Dutch citizen.
The alleged war crimes occurred in Lofa county, a vital area in northwestern Liberia, from 1989 and 1996, during the first Liberian civil war.
Witnesses have claimed that Kamara subjected the residents of the village of Foya to slavery and committed “especially heinous acts of torture.” In one such incident, Kamara is alleged to have given the order to his soldiers to use an axe to hack open the body of a victim and take the heart, which was subsequently consumed.
According to the indictment, he has also been accused of participating in “crimes against humanity” involving “a widespread and systematic practice of torture or inhuman actions.”
Kamara was initially detained in France in 2018 before being freed due to a procedural error but still being investigated. He allegedly tried to flee the country when he was caught again in 2020.