Timber Magnate on Trial for Atrocities in Sierra Leone

A fascinating and extremely important trial began yesterday at the Hague. The defendant, Gus Kouwenhoven, is charged with committing various war crimes against Liberians and violating a UN arms embargo. Kouwenhoven, who is Dutch, was the general manager of the Oriental Timber Company, Liberia’s largest timber company while Charles Taylor was in power. While in that position, Kouwenhoven imported arms for Taylor’s regime, leading the UN to ban him from travelling in 2001 as “an arms trafficker in breach of Resolution 1343 of the Security Council,” which imposed an arms embargo on the Liberian government.

After years of denials, a spokesperson for Taylor’s finally admitted in 2003 that revenues from Liberia’s logging industry had been used to import weapons in violation of the embargo.

The prosecution also alleges that militias hired and armed by Kouwenhoven were responible for some of the worst massacres that took place during Taylor’s regime, including the murders of women and babies.

Kouwenhoven wants Taylor to testify on his behalf at the trial.

Although the links between Liberia’s timber industry and the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone were public knowledge at the time, the European and Chinese timber industries continued to buy Liberian timber. The tireless efforts of Global Witness, an NGO that focuses on the relationship between the exploitation of natural resources and human rights abuses, finally brought the trade to an end in 2003, when the Security Council imposed an embargo on Liberian timber.

More information on the Liberian timber industry is available here.