\n A Swiss appeals court will on Thursday hand down its verdict in the case of a former Liberian warlord accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n Alieu Kosiah was found guilty in June 2021 of multiple atrocities committed during the first of Liberia's back-to-back civil wars, in which around 250,000 people died between 1989 and 2003.\n<\/p>\n
\n Switzerland's Federal Criminal Court in the southern city of Bellinzona found him \"guilty of violating the laws of war\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The verdict marked the first time a Liberian was convicted -- either within the west African nation or anywhere else -- of war crimes committed during the conflict.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kosiah, who settled in Switzerland in 1998 and was arrested in the country in 2014, appealed the verdict.\n<\/p>\n
\n The 48-year-old maintains he is innocent and has requested a full acquittal.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"He has always contested the facts,\" his lawyer Dimitri Gianoli told AFP. \"He is confident he will be acquitted.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n But the proceedings held earlier this year at the Federal Criminal Court appeals chamber provided an opportunity for the prosecutor to add crimes against humanity to the charges.\n<\/p>\n
\n It marked the first time that most serious charge has been tried in Switzerland, made possible by a 2011 law change.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Murder, rape -\n<\/p>\n
\n Like war crimes, crimes against humanity refer to atrocities, including murder, torture and rape. Instead of isolated or sporadic events, it is for incidents carried out in a widespread or systematic way.\n<\/p>\n
\n In the 2021 verdict, Kosiah was found guilty of a slew of war crimes committed as commander of the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) rebel group.\n<\/p>\n
\n He ordered or participated in the killing of 17 civilians and two unarmed soldiers, as well as rape, and deploying a child soldier, the court ruled.\n<\/p>\n
\n He had also ordered lootings and repeatedly ordered, or had himself inflicted, cruel and humiliating treatment of civilians, and mishandled corpses, according to that verdict.\n<\/p>\n
\n He was sentenced to 20 years in prison -- the maximum sentence possible in Switzerland at the time the crimes were committed.\n<\/p>\n
\n If the appeals court finds him guilty of crimes against humanity, he could in theory face a life sentence.\n<\/p>\n
\n The revised charges presented during the appeal emphasised that most of the crimes were part of a \"generalised and systematic attack\" on civilians, justifying the crimes against humanity charge.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Not isolated crimes' -\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We are hoping that the appeals court accepts to extend the conviction to crimes against humanity,\" said Raphael Jakob, a lawyer representing one of seven plaintiffs.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I think it would be an important recognition that these are not isolated crimes, but are part of a pattern of systematic criminality,\" he told AFP, adding that his client was \"among tens of thousands of victims who suffered similar atrocities\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Human rights lawyer Alain Werner, who heads Civitas Maxima and represents four of the plaintiffs, agreed.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"If they go for crimes against humanity, that would be completely historic,\" he told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n He and others said they believe the facts clearly show Kosiah's actions were part of systematic and widespread attacks and amounted to crimes against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n But it remains unclear if the appeals court judges will rule that way on crimes committed prior to the 2011 Swiss law change.\n<\/p>\n
\n So far, only a handful of people have been convicted in Liberia itself for their part in the brutal wars and efforts to establish a war crimes court in the country have stalled.\n<\/p>\n
\n But a Paris court last November found another former Liberian rebel commander, Kunti Kamara, guilty of crimes against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n And earlier this year, another suspected warlord, Gibril Massaquoi, appeared in a Finnish appeals court accused of atrocities in Liberia's civil war following his acquittal last year by a lower court.\n<\/p>\n
\n Former Liberian warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor was convicted in 2012 by an international UN-backed court in The Hague of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but that was over atrocities committed in neighbouring Sierra Leone, not in his own country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Swiss appeals court will on Thursday hand down its verdict in the case of a former Liberian warlord accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Alieu Kosiah was found guilty in June 2021 of multiple atrocities committed during the first of Liberia's back-to-back civil wars, in which around 250,000 people died between 1989 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-117381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n