Naomi: Did get blood diamonds
Aug. 5: Supermodel Naomi Campbell told a court Thursday how she received a pouch of rough diamonds as a late-night gift she assumed came from a former Liberian president, now in the dock for war crimes.
Demurely but stylishly dressed, the catwalk queen told judges it was a “big inconvenience” to have to testify about a bag of “dirty-looking pebbles” in Charles Taylor's trial at The Hague for murder, rape and enslavement.
“I really didn't want to be here,” she said. “Obviously I just want to get this over with and get on with my life.” Campbell said she was woken by a knock on her bedroom door at a guesthouse after meeting Taylor at a celebrity dinner hosted by then South African president Nelson Mandela in September 1997, and handed a pouch she only opened the next morning.
“I saw a few stones in there. Very small, dirty-looking stones ... maybe three, two or three,” Campbell, said to the court.
At breakfast the next morning, she told her then agent Mr Carole White and actress Mia Farrow about the gift, both of whom assumed the stones were diamonds. “One of the two said 'that is obviously Charles Taylor' and I said 'yes I guess it was',” she told the court, adding she never saw Taylor again and did not confront him about the gift she claims she subsequently gave to a charity.
Taylor, 62, is standing trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the 1991-2001 Sierra Leone civil war that claimed some 120,000 lives.He is accused of receiving illegally mined “blood diamonds” in return for arming rebels who murdered, raped and maimed Sierra Leone civilians, cutting off their limbs and carving initials into their bodies.
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