Cannibal warlord dubbed ‘Angel Gabriel’ accused of eating victims, burning kids alive and raping women
A NOTORIOUS warlord dubbed ‘Angel Gabriel’ who is accused of eating innocent victims, burning kids alive and raping women has gone on trial in Finland.
Gibril Massaquoi – who was relocated to Scandinavia in 2008 – faces multiple charges linked to horrific war crimes and crimes against humanity in Liberia.
In one alleged atrocity, Prosecutor Tom Laitinen told a court some of his victims were cut up and “made into food which Massaquoi ate”.
Massaquoi, who was born in Sierra Leone, was a senior member of a rebel group which fought in Liberia during the civil war from 1999 to 2003.
The 51-year-old appeared before the Pirkanmaa District Court in Tampere, the Finnish town where he was arrested in March last year.
He is accused of killing civilians and soldiers who had just been disarmed, rape and recruiting child soldiers in the West African nation.
Massaquoi denies the charges and says he was taking part in peace talks at the time of the alleged crimes.
Some 250,000 people were killed in the Liberian conflict, which was intertwined with the war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
Massaquoi was a commander of the Sierra Leone rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which also fought in Liberia.
It was was known for atrocities such as hacking off the limbs of innocent civilians, as well as murder and mass rape.
Massaquoi gave evidence to the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone set up to investigate war crimes committed in that conflict and was relocated to Finland in 2008 as part of a witness protection programme.
In a historic first, the new trial will move to Liberia and Sierra Leone to hear testimony from up to 80 witnesses and visit sites where the atrocities allegedly unfolded under Massaquoi’s orders.
Wearing a grey suit and facemask, Massaquoi listened through a translator as prosecutor Laitinen read the charges.
They were a grisly litany of killings, rapes and torture the prosecution says were carried out by Massaquoi and soldiers under his command.
He faces a life sentence, which in Finland means on average just 14 years behind bars.
Court documents seen by AFP contend that Massaquoi held an “extremely senior and influential position” in the RUF, one of the main militias fighting alongside then-president Charles Taylor’s NPFL forces.
Finnish law allows the prosecution of serious crimes committed abroad by a citizen or resident.
In the northern Liberian village of Kamatahun Hassala, witnesses say Massaquoi ordered civilians, including children, to be locked into two buildings which were then torched.
At least seven women were raped and murdered in the village and other locals were killed, their bodies cut up and “made into food which Massaquoi also ate,” Laitinen told the court.
The 4,000-page evidence dossier further details mass murders and rapes in Lofa county and the capital Monrovia, and accuses Massaquoi of enslavement and using child soldiers.
Horror toll of Liberia's bloody civil war
Up to 250,000 were killed, while thousands more were mutilated and raped during Liberia's second civil war often by armies of drugged child soldiers led by ruthless warlords.
The conflict was rooted in the previous civil war waged between 1989 and 1996 which eventually saw former rebel leader Charles Taylor become president of the entire nation.
It began in April 1999 when a rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), began a military offensive to topple the government of Taylor.
The capital Monrovia was soon besieged by LURD fighters, and the group’s shelling of the city resulted in the deaths of many civilians.
Tens of thousands of people were displaced from their homes as the result of the four-year conflict.
The Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed by the warring parties on August 18, 2003 marking the end of the conflict and beginning of the country’s transition to democracy under the National Transitional Government of Liberia.
Charles Taylor was later accused of rape and acts of sexual violence, promoting child soldiers, and an illegal ownership of weapons.
He denied these accusations but was eventually testified against by his victims and was then sentenced to 50 years in prison.
The crimes “deliberately and systematically” violated international humanitarian law, and inflicted “irreparable emotional suffering and damage” on the families of his many victims, prosecutors wrote.
Massaquoi insists he was involved in peace negotiations elsewhere in the region at the time of the atrocities.
“He hasn’t been in the places where these offences took place, he has not been in Liberia after June 2001,” defence lawyer Paula Sallinen told AFP.
News that the court will sit in Liberia has also been welcomed in the country whose back-to-back civil wars between 1989 and 2003 left 250,000 people dead and millions displaced.
So far only a handful of people have been convicted for their part in the conflict, and efforts to establish a war crimes court in the country have stalled.
Laitinen praised the “extraordinary” efforts by Finnish police to gather crucial witness testimony.
“They took the bull by the horns and went to Liberia, first of all to negotiate with the Liberian authorities for permission to investigate, then they just went out into the jungle and investigated,” he said
Massaquoi was allowed to relocate to Finland in return for giving evidence to the UN-led Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2003, set up to examine that country’s civil war.
He received immunity from prosecution over acts committed in Sierra Leone, but not in Liberia.
After approximately 10 weeks in Africa, the case will continue until June, with a verdict expected in September.
Former Liberian President Taylor was convicted by an international criminal court in 2012 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but that was in connection with the conflict in Sierra Leone.
Taylor – himself accused of forcing cannibalism on his soldiers in order to terrorise their enemies – is serving his 50-year sentence in a prison in the UK.
His son “Chuckie” Taylor was sentenced to 97 years in prison in a US federal court in 2009 for torturing and killing people while he was the head of Liberia’s anti-terrorist services.