A former rebel who was accused of war crimes has been acquitted by the Finnish court.
On Friday, the decision announced rejected the allegations stating there were not enough factual shreds of evidence to convict the 52-year-old former rebel.
There is however a little bit of indecisiveness as to whether the prosecutor will launch an appeal.
“I understand that in a case like this there are difficult questions that a judge, a court, has to take into consideration regarding whether to convict or not. Now we have to read the judgment carefully and try to see if there’s anything that we just simply can’t agree on with the courts”, said prosecutor Tom Laitinen. “Finland and any other country for that matter might owe something to all the people that have lost their lives during the civil war in, for example, Liberia, and we have a humane responsibility to try and bring the perpetrators to justice”, he added.
The Finnish court is the first in Liberia where no court has tried crimes committed during the war. The institution moved to Liberia in early 2021 with an interest in probing the civil wars of 1986-1996 and 1999-2003.
Former Liberian rebel commander Alieu Kosiah was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Swiss Federal Criminal Court on 18 June 2021. He was the first Liberian to be convicted of war crimes during the devastating conflict in his country. His charges were rape, murder, and cannibalism.
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