Swiss Court Convicts Liberian Rebel, Kosiah For War Crimes

• Gets 20 years jail sentence for rape, killings and cannibalism

A Liberian rebel commander, Alieu Kosiah has been sentenced in Switzerland to 20 years in jail for rape, killings and an act of cannibalism.

In one of the first convictions over the West African country’s civil war, Kosiah gets the maximum 20-year sentence in Switzerland’s war crimes trial by a civilian court.

Documents from the Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court in the southern city of Bellinzona showed that the 46-year-old Kosiah, who went by the assumed name “bluff boy”, faced 25 charges and was convicted on all but four of them.

The 25 charges included ordering or participating in the killing of 17 civilians and two unarmed soldiers; rape, deploying child soldiers; ordering looting; repeatedly inflicting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment on civilians

He was in the rebel armed faction, United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) that fought former President Charles Taylor’s army in the 1990s.

Kosiah was arrested in 2014 in Switzerland, where he had been living as a permanent resident. A 2011 Swiss law allows prosecution for serious crimes committed anywhere, under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Human Rights Watch called Friday’s sentencing a “landmark“. One of the group’s officials, Elise Keppler said; “Switzerland’s efforts on this case should help mobilise wider accountability in Liberia as this shows that these crimes can be prosecuted. I see this as an opportunity.”

Liberia has ignored pressure to prosecute crimes from its back-to-back wars between 1989-2003, in which thousands of child soldiers became bound up in tussles for power exacerbated by ethnic rivalry.

Activists in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, celebrated the verdict. “This will serve as a deterrent for others around the world. I think justice has taken its course,” said Dan Sayeh, a civil society campaigner.

Jefferson Knight, another activist in Liberia, said he hoped the sentence would add to growing pressure for the government to create a war crimes unit, as the country’s truth and reconciliation committee recommended years ago.

Charles Taylor was sentenced for war crimes in 2012, but only for acts in neighbouring Sierra Leone. His son, Chuckie, was sentenced for torture in Liberia by a US court in 2009.

Kosiah had denied all the charges and told the court he was a minor when first recruited into the conflict. He was however cleared on Friday of attempted murder of a civilian, accessory to the murder of a civilian, an order to loot and recruitment of a child soldier.

The court said in an e-mailed statement that the 20-year sentence was the maximum it was allowed to give under Swiss law.

“No mitigating circumstances were taken into account in the sentencing. A deportation from Switzerland was also ordered for a period of 15 years,” it said. Kosiah was also ordered to pay compensation to seven plaintiffs, it added.

It was not immediately clear when the deportation would take place. Kosiah’s sentence includes the 2,413 days, or about six-and-a-half years, that he has already served in pre-trial detention, the court papers showed.

Interestingly, most commanders of the different groups fled the country after the wars ended in 2003. But more than 15 years after, many of those in charge back then still hold positions of political and economic influence in the country.

Unfortunately, the country’s two civil wars were marked by numerous massacres committed by often drugged-up fighters, mutilations, and sexual violence used as a weapon of war.

Most commentaries on the war indicate that the underlying causes of the conflicts, including ethnic divisions and economic disparities, are still strong issues of worry in the Liberian society today.