New witnesses testified Monday in a war crimes case in Liberia's capital, a police investigator said, in the latest stage of a landmark trial against ex-rebel Gibril Massaquoi.
The hearing before a Finnish court marks the second time its judges have travelled to Monrovia in the case against Massaquoi, who is accused of committing rape and ritual murder during Liberia's brutal civil war.
Around a quarter of a million people were killed between 1989 to 2003 in the West African country, in a conflict marked by merciless violence and rape, often carried out by drugged-up child soldiers.
A Sierra Leone national, Massaquoi was a senior commander of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a Sierra Leone rebel group that also fought in Liberia.
He moved to Finland in 2008 and was arrested there in March 2020 after a rights group investigated his war record.
In an unprecedented move, the Finnish court decamped to Monrovia between February and April this year to hear witness testimony in the case.
The proceedings were described as historic, as very few people have been tried for war crimes committed in Liberia, and none inside the country itself.
Witnesses gave gruesome accounts of Massaquoi's alleged actions.
One alleged that the former commander had murdered a victim and then drank his blood for ritual purposes.
The court also heard testimony in Sierra Leone in May, before returning to Finland.
It was back for fresh hearings in Liberia on Monday, according to Thomas Elfgren, a Finnish police investigator involved in the case.
The move came after both the prosecution and Massaquoi's defence called for more witnesses, he said.
The schedule calls for two hearings a week for about two weeks, Elfgren said.
There are regular appeals to establish a war crimes tribunal inside Liberia, a poor nation of five million people where some ex-warlords remain powerful.
President George Weah has resisted the calls, however.