NETHERLANDS / FILE: Special Court for Sierra Leone is ready for a rapid war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor

The U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone have learned the lessons from other tribunals and is ready for a rapid war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, the court's chief prosecutor said on Monday (May 7). Taylor, indicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for stoking civil war in Sierra Leone trough an illicit trade in guns for diamonds, is going on trial in The Hague on June 4. He was moved to The Hague in June last year due to fears a trial in Freetown could spur unrest in Sierra Leone of Liberia. The court's chief prosecutor Stephen Rapp told Reuters he expected the trial to be concluded in about 18 months. "Our expectation is that we can conclude this trial in a period about 18 months, and that is a very rapid period. Obviously, as you know other cases like that, Milosevic took four years and didn't complete, but we believe that judges have learned the lessons and we have from those past experiences, and there were difficulties that were inherent to some extent to, say Milosevic, because it was health that I don't think we have here, but aside from that, I think the crucial thing is that we want to focus this case and not call one more live witness than we need to," mr. Rapp said to Reuters. The Sierra Leone court held a pre-trial conference on Monday, agreeing to sit five days a week with limited breaks in the Taylor trial. The court indicted Taylor in March 2003 on 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity but condensed the charges to 11 counts in March 2006 to ensure a more focused trial. Rapp said Taylor was generally in good health and his case was not complicated by health problems like the Milosevic trial but it faced challenges in bringing witnesses and victims to the Netherlands, more than 5000 km away from the crime scene. "The main challenge, of course, is that the trial is in The Hague, it's more than 5000 kilometres from the scene of the crime, we are having to bring victims and other witnesses generally from the region, almost all of them we protected, in the sense that they'll testify under assumed names, they have to be protected both before and after their testimony as well. Those individuals sometimes are insiders, former confidences of his, and at least they indicated a great deal of fear to us about what is going to happen to them in the future because of this testimony and so that provides an additional challenge, one to convince people to testify and to be absolutely sure one can protect them before and after their testimony, " Rapp concluded. Proceedings on the case are being held in the premises of the International Criminal Court, which is not involved in the trial. The UN Security Council authorised Taylor's transfer after Britain said it would jail him if he is found guilty.

ITN Source | May 8, 2007

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