On July 1, 2010, Super model Naomi Campbell was summoned by the war crimes trial against ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor at the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in Leidschendam near The Hague to give evidence on receiving a "blood diamond". Not appearing at the trial as summoned is punishable by up to 7 years in prison. Despite initially refusing to attend, Campbell was eventually subpoenad and appeared as scheduled as a witness for the prosecution on August 5, 2010.
It's ironical that Cambell who has just been forced to testify against indicted African warlord Charles Taylor once went out with Leonardo De Caprio who played the rough South African smuggler in the the film Blood Diamond!In the United Nations terminology these diamonds are coined as Conflict Diamonds.
Set during Sierra Leone Civil War in 1996-1999, the film Blood Diamond shows a country torn apart by the struggle between government soldiers and rebel forces.The film portrays many of the atrocities of that war, including the rebels' amputation of people's hands to discourage them from voting in upcoming elections.
The film begins with the capture of Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), a Mende fisherman, by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels when they invade the small Sierra Leonian village of Shenge. Separated from his family, Solomon is enslaved to work in the diamond fields under the command of a Warlord called Captain Poison (David Harewood) while his son Dia is conscripted into the rebel forces, the brainwashing eventually turning him into a hardened killer. The RUF use the diamonds to fund their war effort, often trading them directly for arms.In one of the most poingnant scene Djimon Hounsou screamed out inside a prison, "What is left, what is left..."
Well, that's for the United Nations Special Court got to find against Charles Taylor who is charged with terrorizing the civilian population, rape, mass murder and conscripting of child soldiers for active hostility!Here before coming to supermodel Naomi Campbell getting the uncut diamnond as a gift from a NOBODY, let's see how she practised facing judges and jurys in her eventful career and carried through
physically abusing her emplyoees while Charles Taylors militias were maiming the Sierra Leonians!
2000, Campbell pleaded guilty in a Toronto court to a 1998 assault on Georgina Galanis, her then assistant; Campbell had allegedly assaulted Georgina Galanis with a telephone in a hotel room and threatened to throw her out of a moving Peugeot. Under an agreement with the prosecution, her record was cleared in exchange for her expressing remorse; Campbell also paid Galanis an undisclosed sum and agreed to attend anger management classes.
March 2004, the House of Lords overturned a Court of Appeal judgement and awarded Campbell damages in the amount of £3,500, upholding an earlier judgement that her right to privacy had been infringed by the Daily Mirror following publication of photographs of her leaving a Narcotics Anonymous clinic.
March 2005, Campbell allegedly slapped assistant Amanda Brack and beat her around the head with a BlackBerry personal organiser. Campbell's spokesman Rob Shuter denied the incident ever took place. In July 2006, Brack began legal proceedings against Campbell, claiming Campbell abused her verbally and physically on three continents. Brack accused Campbell of assault, battery, and infliction of emotional distress in incidents that started a month after she began working for her in February 2005. Campbell countersued for an unknown amount.Italian actress Yvonne Sciò has claimed Campbell left her "covered in blood" after an altercation at a Rome hotel, allegedly due to the fact that Sciò had worn the same dress as Campbell. Sciò's claim: "She punched me in the face. She was like Mike Tyson."
On 30 March 2006 in New York City, Campbell was arrested for allegedly assaulting her housekeeper with a jewel-encrusted mobile phone, resulting in a bloody head that required several stitches.She was charged with second degree assault, a felony that carries a minimum sentence of one year and a maximum of seven years in prison.
On 28 September 2006, Campbell did not attend a required court appearance in New York City, and the judge ruled that he would order her arrest if she failed to turn up in court the following week.
On 25 October 2006, Campbell was arrested in London on suspicion of assault;she was released on police bail. On 14 November 2006, another former Campbell housekeeper, Gaby Gibson, began a new court case against Campbell seeking unspecified damages, and accused her ex-employer of being a "violent super-bigot".
On 15 November 2006, Campbell appeared in criminal court in New York City regarding her March 2006 assault charges. Her defence lawyer and the prosecutor told the judge that they were "still in the process of working out a possible plea deal in the case".The Boston-based law firm Sullivan & Worcester, which had assigned a top litigator to defend Campbell throughout her many escapades, severed their relationship with Campbell in 2006, allegedly stating publicly that Campbell was a danger to everyone around her.
On 16 January 2007, Campbell pleaded guilty to a charge of reckless assault against her housekeeper Ana Scolavino. She was sentenced to five days community service and ordered to attend two days of an anger management course. In addition, she was ordered to pay medical bills of $363 (£185) to Scolavino who required four stitches after the incident.
According to a report on CNN, Campbell blames "her temper on lingering resentment toward her father for abandoning her as a child".On 19 March 2007, Campbell began mopping floors at New York's Sanitation Department for her service.On 20 August 2007, New York Supreme Court Judge Michael Stallman issued a decision and order.denying Campbell's legal attempt to exclude Gaby Gibson's references from her history of well-publicised, allegedly "chronic abusive and repeatedly violent conduct toward her employees." Judge Stallman reasoned that "if proven, the reports of Campbell's conduct" might result in proving that it was so "wanton or outrageous" to justify the punitive damages sought by Campbell's ex-housekeeper.
Charles Taylor, The Merchant Of Death!
On 3 April 2008, Campbell was arrested inside Heathrow's Terminal 5 on suspicion of assaulting a police officer after one of her bags had been lost.Campbell was subsequently banned from flying globally with British Airways by the airline.She was charged with three counts of assaulting a constable, which carries a maximum sentence of six months in prison and a fine of up to £5,000, one count of disorderly conduct likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress, which is punishable by a fine of up to £2,500, and one count of using threatening, abusive words or behaviour towards cabin crew, which comes with a maximum penalty of £1,000.
On 20 June 2008, Campbell pleaded guilty to four of the five charges against her, while the Crown Prosecution Service dropped one of the counts of assaulting a constable.Campbell was sentenced to 200 hours of community service.Campbell also alleged that British Airways staff called her a "golliwogg supermodel" in the incident.
On 2 March 2010, Campbell's limousine driver filed a report with the New York City Police Department claiming that Campbell had slapped and punched him. She then allegedly fled the scene. A spokesman for Campbell said "there shouldn't be a rush to judgement" and said she would co-operate voluntarily. Investigators initially sought to question Campbell, but police decided to drop the matter after the driver chose not to pursue criminal charges.
In 2010, Mia Farrow stated that Campbell had told her she had been given a large, uncut blood diamond by ex-Liberian leader Charles Taylor while the three were 'overnight guests' of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, in 1997. Campbell refuses to testify on the issue. The model stormed out of an interview with ABC News after refusing to respond to questions about the incident and struck the camera.
Sierra Leone plunged into a decade of civil war starting in the early 1990s - and many of the soldiers were children.Many were forced to take up arms when their villages were overrun; making children kill their own families was a favourite militia tactic.The whole war was funded by conflict diamonds.
In her testimony at The Hague Campbell said she was given "dirty-looking" stones after a dinner attended by Charles Taylor which she was later told were likely to be diamonds. The current location of the stones is disputed. Campbell said that she gave the stones to Jeremy Ratcliffe of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, because she wanted them to go to charity, and that Ratcliffe had told her in a 2009 phone conversation that he still had the stones
Charles Taylor arrested and brought to The Hague
The Nelson Mandela Children's Fund stated in a letter to the court that it had "never received a diamond or diamonds from Ms. Campbell or from anyone else. It would have been improper and illegal to have done so." However, the next day, the BBC reported that Ratcliffe changed his story to state that he did, in fact, receive the stones and has them in his possession, claiming that he is trying to insulate Mandela's charity from suspicion.
Choyon K Habib
Compilation
Sierra Leonians were voting after Charles Taylor were forced out of Liberia.
