Top prosecutor quits Liberia

2005-03-01 10:33

Freetown - The lead prosecutor at Sierra Leone's UN-backed war crimes tribunal announced his resignation on Monday, citing family obligations but expressing no regrets after more than two years in the post.

David Crane, a veteran lawyer from the US defence department, said his three-year contract had come due with the UN-backed court trying atrocities committed during Sierra Leone's brutal 1991-2002 war and that he wouldn't seek to renew it.

"As you know, this is a non-accompanying post," Crane told The Associated Press, meaning his family doesn't live with him in Sierra Leone's war-battered capital, Freetown.

"I am just keeping to the promise I gave to my wife, who is a career (US government) employee," Crane said.

"I'm leaving with a great deal of satisfaction and will continue to work hard for the people of Sierra Leone until I finally leave."

UN spokesperson Fred Eckhard said Crane wrote to secretary-general Kofi Annan that he would not seek reappointment and will step down on July 15. p> He told the secretary-general "that he hoped he could serve mankind and the United Nations in another capacity someday," Eckhard said at UN headquarters in New York.

Cases stem from 10 years of conflict

By statute, only the secretary-general can appoint a prosecutor for the special court, the world's first hybrid international war crimes tribunal.

It was established in January 2002 under an agreement between the United Nations and the Sierra Leone government.

Crane, 54, began his job as head of the prosecution team in August 2002 and trials opened in June 2004.

The Sierra Leone court is handling cases stemming from more than 10 years of fighting for control of Sierra Leone and its diamond fields, a conflict that saw rebels hacking off the limbs, lips and ears of civilian victims.

Former Liberian president Charles Taylor, the highest-profile of the court's 10 indicted suspects, is accused of directing Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front rebels and trafficking in guns and diamonds while in office.

Taylor lives in exile in Nigeria and Crane has vociferously lobbied for his hand over to the Sierra Leone court, which unlike other tribunals mixes UN and local statutes.

Nigeria, which helped broker the peace deal that ended Liberia's 14-year civil conflict last year and sent the first troops to calm the country, has said it will only surrender Taylor to a Liberian court.

- AP