Split Decision in Kouwenhoven Trial

A district court in the Hague has sentenced Gus Kouwenhoven to eight years in prison for smuggling weapons for Charles Taylor in violation of a UN arms embargo.

In their ruling on Wednesday, the judges said Mr. Kouwenhoven’s assistance to Mr. Taylor was “crucial,” and suggested his motivations were not political, but rather “guided purely by financial interests.”

Prosecutors said Mr. Kouwenhoven practiced his timber-for-weapons trade by getting large concessions of valuable Liberian hardwood, selling it on the international market and using his companies’ ships to bring back machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other war supplies, delivering them secretly at night to a Liberian port.

The verdict, however, was only a partial victory for the prosecution. The court acquitted Kouwenhoven on the more serious war crimes charges:

[T]he Dutch court acquitted Mr. Kouwenhoven on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prosecutors had asked for a 20-year prison sentence and a fine of about $570,000 because, they argued, Mr. Kouwenhoven had ordered workers from his two timber companies to fight in militias run by Mr. Taylor. He provided these fighters with weapons and vehicles and therefore shared in the guilt of the atrocities they committed against civilians, the prosecution said.

The judges said not enough evidence had been provided to prove that Mr. Kouwenhoven had known about, and could be linked to, atrocities by his companies’ militias. The prosecution is planning to appeal.

Background on the case is available in a previous post, here.