Amsterdam - Former Liberian President Charles Taylor should have walked free and not been jailed for war crimes because there was not enough evidence to prove he was guilty beyond reasonable doubt, a judge involved in his trial said in a magazine interview.
Justice Malick Sow's criticism of
how the trial was conducted and of the final decision-making process are likely
to be seized on by Taylor's defence lawyers as part of his appeal.
Taylor, 64, was the first head of
state convicted by an international court since the trials of Nazis after World
War Two.
He was jailed in May for 50 years
for helping Sierra Leonean rebels commit what the United Nations-backed court
in The Hague called some of the worst war crimes in history.
Sow, from Senegal, was an
alternate judge at the Special Court of Sierra Leone that tried Taylor in The
Hague, which meant he could step in if one of the three judges was unable to
complete the trial.
When Taylor was convicted in
April, Sow tried to read out a dissenting opinion, but was prevented from doing
so by the court. He no longer works there.
Taylor "should have been a
free man at this stage [of the trial, pending appeal] because I haven't seen
the proof of guilt of the accused," Sow said in his first interview about
Taylor's trial, published in the December edition of New African magazine.
Sow could not be reached for
comment by Reuters, but a person close to him verified his quotes in the
interview.
Countless contradictions
"I couldn't be indulgent in
the face of the countless contradictions, lies, deceptions and manipulations in
this trial, and conclude that the accused was guilty beyond reasonable doubt of
the crimes he was charged with," Sow told the magazine.
"International justice
cannot be based on rumours. These are mass crimes. This is where we must have
the highest standard of proof. It's about proving the guilt of the accused
beyond reasonable doubt. But they didn't even reach the lowest standard of
proof."
Sow criticised the payment of
witnesses and some of the witness statements.
"The accused came with very
official papers, with witnesses who were at the frontline, witnesses who were
main actors of this whole conflict. How can you compare these witnesses with
those people who didn't get even close to the scene?" he said.
"The prosecution's case by
itself is so insufficient, so unreliable. It's about people contradicting
themselves, people denying what they had said in previous statements."
In the interview, Sow said it
came as a "a total surprise" to hear in court that the three judges
had reached a unanimous decision.
"In each of the very few
times we discussed anything, there were very different opinions," he said.
He said he had been excluded from
the final discussions about Taylor, and questioned whether one of the three
judges, who had already been appointed to the International Court of Justice in
The Hague, should have remained as a judge at Taylor's trial.
Morris Anyah, Taylor's lawyer,
said he wants to call Sow as witness in the appeals process and has asked for a
waiver of Sow's immunity from being called as a defence witness.
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