I just received small, dirty stones, Naomi testifies

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British supermodel Naomi Campbell on Thursday told the war crimes trial of former Liberian ruler Charles Taylor that she received a pouch containing “small, dirty-looking stones” after a charity dinner hosted by Nelson Mandela in South Africa in September 1997.
The 40-year-old supermodel told the court, “They were dirty-looking pebbles. I’m used to seeing diamonds, shiny and in a box.”
In her deposition, Campbell said two men had knocked on her door at night and said, “There’s a gift for you,” and handed her the pouch. “They were two black men,” she said, adding that she accepted the pouch, but “there was no explanation, no note. When they gave me the pouch I just put it close to my bed and went back to bed. I opened the pouch the next morning when I woke up.”
“At breakfast I told Miss (actress Mia) Farrow and Miss White (her former modelling agent Carol) what had happened and one of the two said, ‘Well that’s obviously Charles Taylor,’ and I said, yes I guess it was,” she told the court.
Campbell had refused to testify in the trial at the special court for Sierra Leone in the Hague until she was issued with a subpoena, which would have meant a jail sentence for her if she did not appear in court.
Former Liberian ruler Charles Taylor is accused of arming and controlling neighbouring Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front, responsible for atrocities in that country.
She told the court that she assumed that the diamonds were a gift from Taylor, 62. “I assumed it was. I don’t know anything about Charles Taylor. Never heard of him before, never heard of the country Liberia before. I never heard of the term ‘blood diamonds’ before. So I just assumed that it was,” she said.
She said she did not question who sent her the diamonds as she gets “gifts given to me all the time, at all hours of the night... It is quite normal for me to receive gifts.”