Violence is one of the reasons that many countries have remained underdeveloped for several years. States such as Liberia, Iraq, and others find it hard to create a peaceful environment since at most times they are in a war. The sad thing is that people within those states are the ones responsible for their downfall. The worst thing is that these perpetrators may walk around freely without punishment due to the lack of a strong judicial system that can bring them to justice. This is why we have regions like Switzerland which help victims get the justice they deserve by trying the culprits and, if found guilty, their courts get to sentence them.
How is Switzerland able to be involved in international crimes?
Switzerland was a pioneer in the field of international justice. In 1999, it prosecuted Rwandan war crimes suspect outside Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and in 2011, it passed legislation allowing people to pursue universal jurisdiction cases.
Challenges facing Switzerland in dispensing universal justice
For what is normally protracted, difficult, and costly investigations, the federal government has allocated only a few people and funds, according to lawyers, and Switzerland has fallen significantly behind other European countries in recent years.
Mr. Grant says:
“If you only had to depend on governmental authorities, very little would have happened. Without the non-government, civil society organizations, these cases would be nowhere.”
Alieu Kosiah’s case
In Switzerland’s criminal court on Friday, the court convicted a former Liberian warlord guilty of war crimes including murder, cannibalism, and the use of child soldiers. The court found Alieu Kosiah, a former warlord, guilty of 21 of the 25 accusations which is leveled against him, including directing the death of more than 10 civilians and 2 unarmed troops, as well as rape, brutal treatment of people, and the use of a juvenile soldier in armed warfare. The court gave Mr. Alieu Kosiah, a former commander of the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO), the maximum term possible by Swiss law: 20 years in prison.
Alain Werner, the director of the Geneva-based legal organization Civitas Maxima, which was instrumental in Mr. Alieu Kosiah’s arrest and which represented some of the plaintiffs, said:
“This is a landmark judgment, not only because it’s the first war crimes sentence against a Liberian commander, but because it shows it’s possible to convince a court with victims’ testimonies, even almost 3 decades after the facts.”
Mr. Werner described the judges’ decision as “a great win for their fortitude, their tenacity, and their search for justice” for victims who had waited seven years for the case to come to court and traveled to Switzerland to testify.
Human rights organizations hailed the trial as a watershed moment for Switzerland and Liberia. Despite President George Weah’s repeated vague assertions of willingness to set up a war crimes court, no Liberian perpetrators of atrocities have been prosecuted in Liberia.
About the victims’ testimonies
The court heard gruesome testimony of summary murders and torture of civilians during Liberia’s first civil war, as well as how Mr. Alieu Kosiah forced Liberians to journey long distances as porters, carrying commodities pillaged from their farms and communities, in a trial that lasted over a month.
Mr. Alieu Kosiah had raped her multiple times, according to a woman who testified in a video from Liberia’s capital. One of Mr. Alieu Kosiah’s colleagues, called Ugly Boy, chopped open the chest of a church schoolteacher and ripped out and cut up his heart, which he, Mr. Alieu Kosiah, and their associates then ate, according to witnesses.
What is next for Alieu Kosiah?
The authorities arrested Mr. Alieu Kosiah in November 2014 while residing in Switzerland, and he has already served six years of pretrial custody, which the court will deduct from his sentence. Swiss authorities will expel him from Switzerland for more than a decade (15 years) if he is free in the long run.
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