Kunti Kamara

Kunti Kamara, a.k.a. Kunti Kumara, Kunti K., Colonel Kamara, CO Kamara ("Commanding Officer Kamara") or Co Kamara, whose real name may be Awaliho Soumaworo, is a former Liberian rebel militia commander who participated in the First Liberian Civil War as a leader in the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO).

In 2018, he was arrested in France—under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity—and charged in a French court for acts of barbarity including torture, cannibalism, forced labour and complicity in crimes against humanity during that Liberian war, and put on trial starting October 10, 2022, in a Paris court.

The trial was the first of its kind in France against an alleged Liberian war criminal.

In November 2022, Kunti Kamara was found guilty of complicity in crimes against humanity, and acts of barbarity, during 1993 and 1994, and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Paris court in France.

Kamara was born in December 1974 in Liberia.

The First Liberian Civil War (1989–1996) was, in combination with the immediately following Second Liberian Civil War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in modern African history, with an estimated 250,000 people—mostly civilians—killed, many in massacres.

Many more were maimed, raped, tortured or exploited as forced labor.

Many children were forced into combat.

Allegedly, the wide range of atrocities were committed by all sides in the conflict.

During the War, Kamara was (by his own admission) a local commander of the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) – one of the three rebel militias fighting against the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) of Charles Taylor.

Kamara has admitted to being a battlefield commander, of about 80 soldiers, during that war – saying that he did so to defend himself against the NPFL.

In 1993–1994, while not yet 20 years old, Kamara allegedly commanded a ULIMO unit in the northwestern Liberian region of Lofa County where he was allegedly complicit "in massive and systematic torture [along with] inhumane acts" – including allowing and abetting, with his authority, rapes and sexual torture, and also compelling people into forced labor in inhumane conditions (including keeping women as sex slaves ).

In one specific incident – later cited as evidence of his involvement in cannibalism – he allegedly was involved in cutting open a victim's chest with an axe, so the victim's heart could be extracted and eaten.

Kamara has denied all the charges.

Rapes which had happened in 1993 – before French law, in 1994, explicitly recognized them as "crimes against humanity" – were among the charges, but were labeled in the indictment as acts of torture, rather than as rapes, to get around the date limitations of the law.

Karmara's defense lawyer denounced the scheme as "legal acrobatics," though the prosecutor insisted it was reality.

Kamara's trial – in the crimes against humanity division of the Paris court (variously reported as the Paris Assize Court or the Paris Appeals Court ) – was set to begin November 8, 2022, but began October 10, 2022.

It was expected to last until November 4, 2022.

A 10-member jury was empaneled to judge the case.

Kamara denied all the charges – particularly the charge of cannibalism.

In 1994, ULIMO split into two factions: the ethnic-Krahn ULIMO-J, and the ethnic-Mandingo ULIMO-K (headed by Alhaji G.V. Kromah).

Kamara was a commander in ULIMO-K.

In 1997, Kamara traveled to the Netherlands, living there for 12 years.

He worked as an electrician and acquired Dutch citizenship.

The war was followed shortly by the Second Liberian Civil War (1999–2003), ended by the 2003 flight of Liberian President Charles Taylor to Nigeria, and the 2003 Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) enforced by the United Nations Mission in Liberia and United States Marines.

A national Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and Liberian courts, failed to bring any of the guilty responsible to trial, so the international community began to consider trying alleged Liberian war criminals in foreign countries, under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, which asserts that crimes against humanity, wherever they are perpetrated, can be prosecuted and punished in any other country in the world, regardless of the accused's nationality or their country of residence.

Charles Taylor was convicted in a court in Sierra Leone—the first head of state convicted of war crimes since the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials after World War II.

Others were tried and convicted in the United States, France and Switzerland.

He is a Liberian with Dutch nationality through citizenship acquired in the early 2000s.

He is reportedly of the Mandingo ethnic group.

He then moved to Belgium, and then France in 2016.

At that time, Dutch investigators were looking into suspects in Liberia's civil war.

France's Code of Criminal Procedure, Sec. 689-11, says that any citizen, or non-citizen, can be tried [in French courts] for international crimes against humanity, if those crimes were illegal in the country where they happened and the accused is a resident of France.

Civitas Maxima, a swiss NGO which documents international crimes and provides the victims with juridic support in their quest for justice, alerted French authorities about Kamara's case in 2018.

The Liberian government – although it has declined to prosecute any Liberian war criminals since the end of the country's civil wars – cooperated with the investigation.

Kamara was arrested in the suburbs of Paris, France, September 4, 2018.

He was released due to a procedural error, but put under investigation, and rearrested in 2020 while reportedly attempting to leave the country.

He was indicted in a French court, November 2020, for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Liberian war.

The indictment specifically accused Kamara of complicity in...

These acts are reportedly qualified as "crimes against humanity."