Finnish court acquits ex-rebel accused of Liberia war crimes

HELSINKI - A Finnish court on Friday acquitted a suspected warlord accused of atrocities in Liberia's civil war, including rapes, ritual murders and the recruitment of child soldiers.

The Pirkanmaa district court found it was "not proven with sufficient certainty" that Gibril Massaquoi, 52, had been involved in the alleged crimes in the later years of Liberia's second internal conflict, which ended in 2003.

At the time, Massaquoi was a senior commander of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a Sierra Leonean rebel group that also fought in Liberia.

Massaquoi moved to Finland in 2008 and was arrested there in March 2020 after a rights group investigated his war record.

He had denied all charges and claimed he was not in Liberia when the alleged offences took place.

The trial has been closely watched by campaigners who have fought for decades for those who carried out atrocities in Liberia to face justice.

It was the first such case to be partly heard on Liberian soil.

Back-to-back civil wars between 1989 and 2003 in the West African nation of five million left 250,000 people dead and millions displaced.

The conflicts were marked by merciless violence and rape, often carried out by drugged-up child soldiers.

So far only a handful of people have been convicted for their part in the conflict, and efforts to establish a war crimes court in the country have stalled.

Massaquoi risked a life sentence, which in Finland means on average 14 years behind bars. - AFP