THE HAGUE,
Netherlands - A former bodyguard for
Charles Taylor gave an insider's view
Wednesday of the former Liberian
president's regime, testifying that he
funneled arms, fighters, communications
equipment and cash to rebels in Sierra
Leone who were notorious for their
brutality.
Varmuyan Sherif, 39, told war crimes
judges he had served as a senior
security officer for Taylor and his
family after Taylor became president in
1997 and was responsible for the
leader's motorcade and protection on
some of his foreign journeys.
Sherif was the first of nearly 60
witnesses from Taylor's inner circle
whom the prosecution plans to call to
support allegations that Taylor
orchestrated atrocities during Sierra
Leone's 10-year civil war from his
mansion in the Liberian capital,
Monrovia.
Pointing to towns and routes on maps,
Sherif detailed aid supplied by the
Liberian leader to Sam Bockarie and his
Sierra Leone rebel group, the
Revolutionary United Front, or RUF.
Taylor sent them truckloads of arms,
urged Liberian rebels to join the RUF
and gave Bockarie a satellite phone and
cash, Sherif said. Bockarie, meanwhile,
smuggled diamonds into Liberia in a
mayonnaise jar, he added.
Taylor
brought 350 RUF fighters into a Liberian
anti-terrorism unit run by his son,
Chuckie Taylor, and provided the RUF
with a house in Monrovia, Sherif said.
Taylor, 59, is the first former African
head of state tried by an international
court. He has pleaded innocent to 11
charges linked to his alleged support of
Sierra Leone rebels.
Meeting with rebels described
Sherif spoke to an elated Bockarie
shortly after the rebel's first
face-to-face meeting with Taylor at the
executive mansion, called White Flower.
Bockarie was carrying U.S. dollars and a
satellite phone he said Taylor gave him.
"He showed me the money and the
satellite phone and he told me he was
now a happy man," Sherif said. Bockarie
said he would now have to "achieve his
mission," Sherif said, adding that
Bockarie did not say what the mission
was.
Sherif said he saw Bockarie in Monrovia
on at least two other occasions,
including once when a planeload of
weapons and ammunition arrived at the
airport and was trucked to White Flower.
Sherif, wearing a traditional long brown
shirt and matching trousers, did not
look across at Taylor as he entered the
chamber of the Special Court for Sierra
Leone. The trial was moved from Freetown
to The Hague for fear it could re-ignite
instability at home.
Taylor took copious notes during
Sherif's testimony, which was to
continue Thursday.
Sherif, a former rebel who fought
against Taylor's forces in Liberia's
civil war in the 1990s, was brought into
a "government of inclusion" that
included many former opposing factions
following Taylor's election as president
in 1997.
On one occasion, he said he pleased the
president by persuading former fighters
to turn over a large stash of weapons
they had buried to avoid turning them in
during a disarmament program. Sherif
said he himself drove one pickup truck
full of the weapons to the Sierra Leone
border and gave them to Bockarie.
Secret communications center alleged
In late 1998, Taylor sent Sherif to
Sierra Leone to collect Bockarie. In an
apparent attempt to impress or
intimidate his Liberian visitors,
Bockarie shot and killed five captured
rival fighters, Sherif said.
The following day, Sherif was taken to a
radio room outside Bockarie's official
residence where an operator immediately
reached a secret communications center
on the fifth floor of Taylor's mansion.
Although Sherif was a senior member of
Taylor's security apparatus, he had not
known about the room, he said, but it
was clearly a well-established
communication channel with the rebels
across the border.
Earlier Wednesday, defense lawyers
completed their cross examination of a
Sierra Leonean clergyman and teacher who
had described in harrowing detail the
massacre and decapitation of 101 men and
the dismemberment of a child soldier.
On Tuesday, Alex Tamba Teh recounted
watching young boys methodically hack
off the hands and feet of another
teenager, hearing the terrorized screams
of women being raped, stepping over
corpses too numerous to count and
helping unload weapons for Sierra
Leonean rebels off a Liberian
helicopter.
Taylor's
trial, adjourned in June after Taylor
boycotted the proceedings and fired his
lawyer, resumed Monday after a six-month
recess.
Source: Associated Press
