Trial Monitoring

Special Court for Sierra Leone, CDF Trial, Update 44

June 17, 2005
Author(s)
Sara Kendall
Special Court for Sierra Leone, CDF Trial, Update 44
Publication Documents
Case or Series

CDF Trial

Case or Series

Special Court for Sierra Leone

Country

Sierra Leone

Language

English

This week the prosecution called two of its three expert witnesses who are slated to testify in the CDF case. One witness was called as a military specialist to testify about the organization of the CDF, including the effectiveness of its command structure. The second witness was called as an expert on child soldiers, but the testimony was heard entirely in closed session in order to protect the witness’s identity. Both witnesses were contested by the defence on the grounds that their testimony was irrelevant or outside the scope of the indictment.

The first witness, Colonel Richard Iron, was contacted by the Prosecution through the British Ministry of Defence in order to determine the extent to which the CDF was functioning as a military organization. This evidence was led to assist the court in understanding the context in which the CDF was operating. Colonel Iron’s conclusions were contained in a written report which was entered into evidence. His live testimony did not focus on the individual responsibilities of the three accused individuals, but rather on the command structure of the CDF as a whole. In particular, he described a shift in the structure of the CDF following the AFRC coup in May of 1997, when it moved from a dispersed defensive group of traditional territorial hunting societies into an organized offensive force based in the village of Talia in southwestern Sierra Leone.