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Africa Subsaharan
Terror Tactics Described at Taylor Trial
2008-03-12
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - During West Africa's civil wars, Charles Taylor encouraged his fighters to "play with human blood" to create fear among his enemies, a former militia commander testified Wednesday at Taylor's war crimes trial.
Wouldn't it be easier to play with a femur? It certainly would inspire just as much fear ...
Joseph Marzah described militia checkpoints meant to terrify the population, with human heads mounted on sticks and human intestines used as rope to barricade roads. He said Taylor ordered him to kill civilians, telling him after one march into Bong County in Liberia that anyone there must be collaborating with the enemy. "We executed everybody—babies, women, old men. There were so many executions. I can't remember them all," Marzah told the court.

Prosecutors described Marzah as one of their key witnesses, testifying with inside knowledge of the former Liberian president's operations in Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone, where he is accused of responsibility for the widespread murder, rape and amputations committed by soldiers loyal to him.

Taylor, 59, is accused of trading so-called "blood diamonds" mined in Sierra Leone and smuggled through Liberia to finance the civil war, and of orchestrating the violence from his presidential palace in Liberia's capital, Monrovia. The first former African head of state to face an international tribunal, Taylor has pleaded not guilty to 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is being tried by the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, which has been hearing the case in The Hague, Netherlands.

His trial began last year but was halted for six months after a chaotic first day on which he fired his legal team. The case resumed in January, when prosecutors began call the first of dozens of witnesses expected to testify.
They should be finished in 2011, unless Carla del Ponte intervenes ...
Marzah, who described himself as Taylor's chief of operations and commander of the Death Squad that specialized in executions, said he smuggled both arms and diamonds for Taylor.

Weapons were flown in to Sierra Leone on what he described as a Russian cargo plane brought by a "white guy with a big stomach" who was a friend of Taylor's. He did not mention the man's name.
Would it be Viktor Bout by any chance?
Marzah said forces of Taylor's National Patriotic Liberian Front were told on several occasions to show no mercy to civilians. "He made us understand that you have to play with human blood so enemy forces would be afraid of you," Marzah said.

At times Marzah became frustrated and angry when questioned too closely about the timing of events, saying he had been with Taylor "from beginning to end," and had done too much to recall the dates of each event.

Marzah said he was instructed to assassinate a militia leader, Issa Sesay, because he was about to sign a peace agreement, but Sesay evaded Marzah's ambush. He described intercepting a four-vehicle convoy that was believed to be carrying Liberia's then-President Samuel Doe, but Doe was not there. The commander of the group called Taylor for instructions. Taylor "said to execute them with knives," Marzah testified. "There were about 72 of them, and we executed them with knives the same day."

Doe was killed in September 1990, which Marzah said was shortly after the abortive ambush.
Posted by:anonymous5089

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