Former rebel commander Kunti Kamara has been on appeal in Paris since Tuesday after being sentenced to life in prison at the end of 2022 for barbarism and complicity in crimes against humanity during the first Liberian civil war (1989-1997).
This former commander of the United Liberation Movement for Democracy (Ulimo) was tried in the first instance in an unprecedented trial in France that took place in October and November 2022.
The Paris jury then sentenced the former militiaman, born in 1974, to life imprisonment for a series of abuses against civilians in 1993-1994, including the torture of a teacher whose flesh he allegedly ate at the heart, and for his passivity in the face of the repeated rapes of two teenage girls by soldiers under his command.
He had appealed and found himself back in the dock, wearing a black down jacket and emaciated features.
Mr. Kamara was arrested in the Paris region in September 2018 and tried in Paris under the “universal jurisdiction” that France exercises, under certain conditions, to judge the most serious crimes committed outside its territory. This is the first time that this mechanism has been used for acts committed in a country other than Rwanda.
During the trial in 2022, Kunti Kamara maintained his innocence and claimed to be the victim of a “conspiracy.” Before the jury, several plaintiffs and witnesses who had come specifically from Liberia nevertheless certified that the defendant was actually “C. O Kundi” – for “Commanding Officer” – who is said to have contributed to a reign of terror in the northwest of the country that fell into the hands of Ulimo in the early 1990s.
During the trial in the first instance, unspeakable atrocities were reported: murder of local residents by forcing them to drink boiling water, trafficking in human flesh, intestines used as checkpoints, rape with a bayonet dipped in salt.
For the three weeks of the appeal process, witnesses and plaintiffs will once again come from Liberia, despite the “testing process” that this new trial represents, but in the hope that it can “lift the veil a little on what it was.” explained before the hearing the lawyer for the eight civil parties, Me Sabrina Delattre.
The trial is scheduled to last until March 29th.