January 12, 2023 [Finland] Day 2: Written evidence: Defense
Defense written evidence presented
The second day of the appeal proceedings was dedicated to the Defense’s written evidence. The Defense first gave a picture of the larger context of the conflict in Liberia by presenting documents pertinent to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC). They cited the TRC’s final report and other similar documents linked to the Second Liberian Civil War. These documents were used to demonstrate the wide scope of the TRC’s work. The Defense pointed out that the defendant’s name was not mentioned anywhere in the TRC documents as among the suspected perpetrators of war crimes, and that there were actually multiple other persons named Massaquoi included in the reports.
The Defense also presented a document prepared by the Finnish police that conducted the pre-trial investigation, the NBI. This document demonstrated that the police had gone through the TRC’s reports and the actual interview documents that the TRC had at its disposal when it drafted its report. According to the Defense, the police summary of the TRC’s documents did not mention Mr Massaquoi, and rather seemed to point towards other individuals as perpetrators of some of the crimes in question. The Defense also presented a document relating to the NBI’s trip to the United States, where they had accessed and photographed all available newspapers from the Liberia/Sierra Leone region from November 1, 1998, to December 31, 2004. Here again, not one newspaper article designated Mr Massaquoi as the alleged perpetrator of the acts.
In addition to documents discussing the context and historical events in more general terms, the Defense presented multiple other detailed written documents. They presented newspaper articles about the RUF, the civil wars in both Sierra Leone and Liberia, and persons related to Mr Massaquoi, interviews that Mr Massaquoi had given to various media outlets and letters that he had signed between 1999 and 2003.
