\n A Swiss appeals court on Thursday upheld a 20-year sentence for a former Liberian warlord, confirming his war crimes conviction and, for the first time in Swiss history, handing down a verdict of crimes against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n Alieu Kosiah was again found guilty 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 His lawyer Dmitri Gianoli hinted that his client, who pleaded his innocence and demanded an acquittal, would appeal the decision to Switzerland's supreme court.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kosiah, who settled in Switzerland in 1998 and was arrested in the Alpine country in 2014, \"is very disappointed by the court's decision,\" he wrote to AFP in an email.\n<\/p>\n
\n The judges, he maintained, \"did not take into account the plaintiffs' many contradictions\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Questioning whether the verdict was \"a political decision\", he said his client would \"examine all the measures at his disposal to reestablish the truth\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Kosiah's conviction by the Federal Criminal Court in 2021 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 - 'Historic' -\n<\/p>\n
\n On Thursday, the Federal Criminal Court's appeals chamber in the southern Swiss city of Bellinzona confirmed the earlier ruling and the accompanying sentence of 20 years behind bars.\n<\/p>\n
\n The appeal ruling also confirmed that after serving his sentence he should be deported and barred from re-entering Switzerland for 10 years.\n<\/p>\n
\n Most strikingly, the appeals court judges agreed with the prosecutor and plaintiffs that a number of his actions also amounted to crimes against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n That marks the first time anyone has been convicted of that most serious charge in Switzerland, made possible by a law change in 2011.\n<\/p>\n
\n This ruling is \"historic\", human rights lawyer Alain Werner, who heads the NGO Civitas Maxima and represents four of the seven plaintiffs, told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"This is a great day for these incredibly brave Liberian victims who crossed seas to find justice, and obtain it in spite of Ebola at the beginning of the case, and Covid-19 at the end,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It is also a great day for justice and for Liberia.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - Widespread, systematic -\n<\/p>\n
\n Like war crimes, crimes against humanity refer to atrocities, including murder, torture and rape. However, instead of isolated or sporadic events, the charge is used for incidents carried out in a widespread or systematic way.\n<\/p>\n
\n In the 2021 verdict, Kosiah, now 48, 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 Thursday's verdict found that a number of those actions, including the murder of four civilians and incitement to murder of 13 others, amounted to crimes against humanity.\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 on Thursday upheld a 20-year sentence for a former Liberian warlord, confirming his war crimes conviction and, for the first time in Swiss history, handing down a verdict of crimes against humanity. Alieu Kosiah was again found guilty of multiple atrocities committed during the first of Liberia's back-to-back civil wars, in […]<\/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-117461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n