Special Court for Sierra Leone, CDF Trial, Update 40

CDF Trial

Special Court for Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone

English

The sixth session of the CDF trial opened this week, with his Honour Judge Itoe announcing that his Honour Judge Boutet had been elected as Presiding Judge for the next year of trial. Rather ceremoniously, the court was then adjourned so that the judges were able to leave the Chamber and re-emerge in the correct order for Judge Boutet to occupy his new place at the centre of the bench. The trial session began with the prosecution leading its sixty-second witness, Witness TF2-079, a former Kamajor who played a logistics and support role in the society during the period of the conflict. His testimony seemed to be led primarily to implicate the first accused, Chief Samuel Hinga Norman, as being individually criminally responsible in the planning, preparation and execution of certain of the Kamajor attacks in the Lower Bambara chiefdom as well as the Black December Operation. In particular, Norman is alleged to have issued general orders for the execution of civilians suspected to be junta collaborators in Tongo.