Taylor's prosecution ends
2009-01-30 18:08
The Hague - The final prosecution witness in the trial of ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor told judges on Friday how he pleaded with rebels to cut off his last remaining hand so they would spare his toddler son.
Alusine Conteh told the Special Tribunal for Sierra Leone that he, his wife and four-year-old son had encountered a group of soldiers on the road in January 1999 while fleeing attacks in the capital Freetown on foot.
After being made to watch as a man in civilian clothes chopped off a family friend's hands on the soldiers instructions, Conteh was ordered to step forward.
"The only thing I asked of them, was 'What have I done'?. I put my left hand on the slab. He raised the axe and hacked once.
"My child screamed out: 'Don't cut off my father's hand'. The soldiers said he was making a noise and they said we should untie him from his mother's back.
"I said: 'Instead of you chopping off his hand, chop off both of mine'. They said I should place my right hand, and they hacked it twice."
Conteh, his stumps wrapped in bandages, was the 91st and final witness to testify in Taylor's trial on 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the brutal 1991-2001 civil war in Sierra Leone.
About 120 000 people were killed in the conflict, with rebels mutilating thousands more - cutting off arms, legs, ears or noses.
Taylor is accused of arming, training and controlling Sierra Leone's notorious Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, blamed for many of the mutilations, in exchange for still-unknown amounts of diamonds used to fund warfare.
The trial started in The Hague in June 2007, and the prosecution expects it to be concluded before year-end.