March 30, 2023 [Liberia] Day 40: Witnesses submit evidence
Witness H1 is heard
The defense questions H1
The defense began by asking about H1’s experience of the Second Liberian Civil War. H1 testified that he served at the SSS, the Special Security Service. His commander was Magical Day-Day, aka Peter Paye. H1 served in the Advanced Reconnaissance team under President Charles Taylor. He served between 1998 and 2000 and continued to work in the team after the end of the Second Civil War until 2008.
The witness testified that he was arrested in 2002 due to allegations that he was collaborating with dissident groups and LURD rebels. He was arrested on 14 July 2002. Around 10 pm, he was taken to the Military Police headquarters and by around 1.30 am that night, he was taken to Benjamin Yeaten’s base on Back Road in Congo Town. Another person, [REDACTED], who was also a member of the SSS, was arrested alongside him. They spent approximately an hour at Back Road and were then driven to Klay by Benjamin Yeaten and his bodyguards. The witness then named some of the bodyguards: Joe Tuah, the Deputy Director of the SSS, and Lieutenant Jallah, who was accompanied by his army of about 30 men. They arrived in Klay around 2.30 am. They were taken out of the car and placed in a pit. The next morning, they were brought out to face Benjamin Yeaten, who asked them questions. Yeaten saw them eating and took their food away and asked the guard angrily why he had given them food. Around 8 or 9 pm, Yeaten’s men brought in six or seven other prisoners. H1 named Background 1 and other others. [REDACTED] was brought to Klay before the other group. Background 1 and the others were brought two days after the arrival of [REDACTED] on 17 July 2002.
H1 described that the pit they were kept in was located at Klay junction, at an old rubber processing station. He drew a picture of the area and showed it to the court. All the prisoners were put in one cell. They were occasionally taken outside to eat. The food was not hygienic, it was put inside a bath bucket and the prisoners had to eat out of the bucket. H1 saw Benjamin Yeaten more than two or three times. He was interrogated in Klay, more than four to six times. They were taken out of the pit to be interrogated and then brought back to the pit. The interrogations were done by Joe Tuah and the Special Forces, 7 to 8 people altogether. H1 estimated that the Special Forces were NPFL. The witness gave the names of some of the Special Forces, Sam Selesie, Dopu Menkason. According to H1, NPFL members were Liberian.
The witness testified that he was treated inhumanely during the interrogations. He was tied by tabay and still has marks from where the ropes sank into his skin. H1 described: ‘At times they will carry a person outside and we will hear gun sounds and they will say they will do the same thing to you if you don’t answer, to instill fear in us’. The witness confirmed that Background 1 had been interrogated in Klay, but Background 1 had not told him about his interrogation. He estimated that Background 1 was interrogated in a similar way to everyone else: they were tabayed and electrocuted during the interrogations. He clarified that he had not been electrocuted himself, but he had heard from the other prisoners that they had been. [REDACTED] had told H1 that his penis had been electrocuted. Background 1 had also told him that he had been electrocuted. Background 1 did not elaborate further. When the prisoners were taken outside together and then taken one by one into a room, Background 1 came back and told them that he had been electrocuted. H1 estimated that Background 1 was brought to Klay on 16 or 17 July 2002, a few days after H1 had been brought there on 14 July.
The prisoners were all taken to different places from Klay. Some were taken to Vahun, some to Foya and other places. H1 was taken to Saclepea, Background 1 was taken to Foya, he was taken away before everyone else. Four or five prisoners were flown out of Klay at the same time on a helicopter. H1 was taken from Klay to the former president’s farm a day after Background 1 had left Klay. He was then taken to a police station in Gbarnga and further to Saclepea.
H1 testified that the same people interrogated both him and Background 1 in Klay, explaining that there was a team that had been set up just for interrogations. He estimated that Background 1 was interrogated for the first time on the day after he was brought to Klay on 16 or 17 July. He did not know whether Background 1’s penis had been electrocuted more than once, he had only heard him talk about it once when he said that Joe Tuah, Benjamin Yeaten and other guys were giving him electric shocks to the penis. H1 saw Background 1 again in October 2002 in Monrovia, when they were arrested and brought to the National Bureau of Investigation offices on Gurley Street. H1 had not seen Background 1 recently, Background 1 had only called H1 once and wanted to see him, but they did not meet.
The witness had heard of Gibril Massaquoi, he used to be a spokesman for the RUF. H1 has not met Gibril Massaquoi. He testified that he had made notes of his experiences after his release. He has been writing them for five to seven years, when something would come back to him. Some of his notes deal with the events in Klay. The witness showed his notes to the court. He testified that he had begun to write his notes in 2003, around November. H1 confirmed that he had personally written the section in the notes dealing with torture, beating, tabay and electrocution. He confirmed that he had written all the notes contained in the notebook. The witness could not remember exactly when he had written the notes about the torture in Klay, but testified that he had written them between 2003 and 2009 or 2010.
The prosecution questions H1
The prosecution began by asking H1 about the SSS. H1 testified that his commander was Magical Day-Day aka Anthony Paye and Benjamin Yeaten was the highest-ranking commander. He did not have any knowledge of Benjamin Yeaten’s co-operation with foreign soldiers or Sierra Leonean soldiers, repeating that the interrogation had only been carried out by Liberians. He confirmed that he had been arrested on 14 July 2002. The prosecution pointed out that he had told the Finnish police that he had been arrested on 19 July 2002. H1’s notes were examined, and it was pointed out that he had written down that he had been arrested on 14 July 2002.
H1 explained that he was never interrogated with Background 1. The interrogations were conducted one at a time, with everyone waiting outside while one person was interrogated. He knew every person on the Special Forces interrogation panel, some of them are not alive anymore. H1 could not tell how many times Background 1 was interrogated. He estimated that interrogations took place for six to seven days in total and clarified that they did not take place every day, sometimes they were left in the pit for multiple days in between interrogations.
The witness estimated that Background 1 was taken from Klay in September, while he himself was taken to Saclepea on 3 September. Background 1 had told him one time that he had been electrocuted on the penis by Joe Tuah and Benjamin Yeaten. Background 1 mentioned this outside the interrogation building, not inside the pit. He did not tell this to just H1, he said it to the whole group of prisoners, to warn them.
Further questions from the defense
H1 confirmed that he knew all the interrogators before coming to Klay. There were no women amongst them.
Background 1 called him about a year and a half ago and wanted to meet him. He told him that he would like to see him in town, but never called back.
Witness X9 is heard
The defense questions witness X9
The defense began by asking X9 about his interview with the Finnish police in October 2021. The witness confirmed that he had been interviewed twice. He had been in the same room as the court hearings, with the police, Thomas Elfgren and a woman. The witness had heard from the radio that the Finnish police was in Monrovia, accusing Gibril Massaquoi and seeking the truth about the matter. X9 then contacted [REDACTED], a person that he knew from before and who was working for a human rights organization. He told the witness that people were in Monrovia and gave his phone number to a person in charge of the case. The witness was then asked to come to the interview. The witness was under the impression that [REDACTED] worked with Background 1 at the organization, which had a gap with the people in court. [REDACTED] did not say whether his organization was related to the Massaquoi case. The witness did not know the name of the organization, he just knew it is a human rights organization led by Background 1.
According to X9, the reason for his second interview was that he had mentioned in the first interview that he had photographs to show the Finnish police, so he was asked to come back and show them. When he came back for the second interview, he brought two photographs with him. The first was of Gibril Massaquoi and the second showed a group of people in it with Gibril Massaquoi standing in front.
The witness testified that he does not have a computer. He does not know how to use a computer or edit photographs. The witness identified the photographs he had brought to the Finnish police, as well as some additional photographs, one of which he hadn’t brought. The defense pointed out that the Finnish police had noted that X9 had brought all the photographs included in the document, which he denied.
X9 was asked about the photograph with the group of people, and how he had gotten it. He explained that he was in Sierra Leone during the war, he was abducted on his way to school by rebels, and was recruited as a soldier. They crossed into Liberia through Kailahun and went to Lofa, Kamatahun. He spent most of the time there. The children were not fighting but carried the soldiers’ loads and prepared food for them. From Kamatahun they went to Voinjama and then to Monrovia. When they arrived in Monrovia, they went to the YMCA and were divided into the apartments across the street. The witness was assigned to Gibril Massaquoi and brought to Twelve Houses at ELWA Junction, while the rest went with Sam Bockarie, aka Mosquito. One day, X9 and others were left in the apartment by the soldiers, who were escaping from someone. While they were packing up everything in the apartment, he found this photograph. He did not know the people in the photograph, but they were fighters who were in Kamatahun. X9 was not there when this photograph was taken. He could recognize only one person from the photo, the fourth person on the left. X9 gave this person’s name to the court. The person on the top right corner of the photo is Gibril Massaquoi. The witness did not notice anything strange about the photo. He estimated that it was 2000, 2001 or 2002 when he found the photo in Monrovia. It was around the time the soldiers left.
The defense asked X9 about two other photographs. He identified the person in one of the photos as Benjamin Yeaten and the person in the other as Gibril Massaquoi. He did not know where these photos were taken. He had also found these photos when he was packing up the house in Monrovia. X9 confirmed that he had not brought one of the photographs to the Finnish police. He had originally brought just one photograph, and Elfgren had asked him if he had any other ones. He had told Elfgren that he had more, and Elfgren had asked him to bring them all. X9 speculated that one of the photographs may have been with the others, but he could not recall bringing it.
The prosecution questions X9
The prosecution began by asking about the organization in which [REDACTED] and Background 1 worked. The witness repeated that he does not know the name of the organization, he only knows that it is a human rights organization led by Background 1. X9 had not received any of the photographs from [REDACTED], Background 1 or any other representative of the organization. He found all the photos from the same house at the same time, when the soldiers left them there. He and the other children left as well, as they thought the army might come for them too. They took everything they wanted from the apartment and left. The witness found the photos in the chief’s bedroom, Gibril Massaquoi’s bedroom. He kept the photos until the interview with the police, but he did not get them back after the interview.
X9 testified that he contacted [REDACTED] after hearing the news on the radio as he knows that he works at the human rights organization. He asked [REDACTED] if he knows anything about the case. When asked why he wanted to get involved in the trial, he responded: ‘I should have my first degree or masters, they took us from school, no more opportunities to go back to school to continue. We lost our parents in the war. If we have the opportunity to prosecute, we can do it.’ The witness had not discussed anything related to this testimony with [REDACTED], Background 1 or anyone at the organization. The photographs he had brought to the interview were ‘regular photographs’.
Further questions from the defense
The witness repeated that he had heard about the case on the radio and contacted [REDACTED], who helped him get in touch with the police. The people present during the interview were Elfgren and one of his colleagues, a Finnish woman. The defense pointed out that according to the investigation report, [REDACTED] was also present during the interview in case X9 could not understand Liberian English. The witness denied this and said [REDACTED] brought him to the interview and waited outside the room. The defense further pointed out that X9 had been recorded saying to the police that [REDACTED], who belongs to the same community as X9, had called him a few days before the interview and asked him if he speaks the same dialect as Mr Gibril Massaquoi, if he knew anything about Mr Massaquoi and if he could prove it. X9 had responded that he knows something about Mr Massaquoi and he has a photograph of him. [REDACTED] had asked him if he could bring the photos and do something for him, to which X9 had answered that since [REDACTED] is his big brother, he would do so. The witness responded that he had told the police that he had heard about the case on the news and he then called [REDACTED] to ask about it, who then asked X9 if he could come and meet these people. X9 repeated that [REDACTED] had not called him, he had called [REDACTED].
An audio recording of X9’s police interview was played in court. The defense asked X9 whether he had heard himself on the recording saying that [REDACTED] had called him. The witness responded that [REDACTED] had called him back, after he had initially called him. He had called to ask about the news and afterwards, [REDACTED] called him and asked if X9 could do something for him. The witness confirmed that Mr Massaquoi speaks Mende.
X9 testified that he had found the picture with the group of soldiers and Massaquoi at the house in Monrovia. X9 knew a village called Mende Gumah, it is in Kailahun, he had travelled through there during the war. He had not found any photos in that village. The defense asked the witness about another photograph that was discussed during the first interview. He responded that he had brought the group photo and another photo that had not been presented to him. The defense pointed out that he had told the Finnish police that he had found the photo of Gibril and the people behind him in Sam Bockarie’s house when they all left. He had also told the police that he had been there when the photo was taken, when the soldiers returned from the front. He responded that he had been there when the photograph had been taken and that he had brought it to the Finnish police.
The witness testified that he could now remember bringing the other photograph. He had also found it in the apartment. The defense pointed out that the photo was taken in Sierra Leone in 1999 and can be found online. The witness responded that he didn’t know about that, he just found it at the apartment. The defense pointed out that he had just said that he was there when the photo was taken, to which he replied that he found it at the apartment.
X9 testified that he had brought the two remaining photos to the police. He was not aware of the photographs having been manipulated.
Further questions from the prosecution
X9 repeated he had contacted [REDACTED] after hearing about the Massaquoi trial on the radio. After he had called [REDACTED], he had called him back.
Further questions from the defense
X9 had asked [REDACTED] if he knew anything about the Massaquoi trial. [REDACTED] then asked him the same question when he later called him back. The defense pointed out that the witness had told the Finnish police that he had found the photo with the rebels posing in a village called Mende Gumah. X9 testified that Mende Gumah is in Kailahun but he did not find the photo there.
