Dutch police arrest national for war crimes in Liberia

Authorities in the Netherlands said they had arrested and charged a national businessman close to exiled President Charles Taylor of Liberia with war crimes and smuggling weapons during that country's civil war. The 62-year-old man whom the authorities refused to name, was arrested last Friday in the Dutch city of Rotterdam following a year-long investigation, the Public Prosecutor said in a statement on Monday. The man, identified as Guus van Kouwenhoven in previous investigative reports by the United Nations and non-governmental organisations is also suspected of supporting brutal militias. "Militias belonging to the Dutchman's logging companies apparently took part in massacres of civilians in which nothing and nobody was spared, not even babies," added the Public Prosecutor. "The arms used to commit these war crimes were apparently supplied by the Dutchman". Kouwenhoven had managed Hotel Africa, Liberia's five star hotel at the time. He also had a hand in several logging companies and managed one of the largest operations in Liberia - the Oriental Timber Company (OTC), to which Taylor granted a massive 1.44 million hectare concession in the country's coastal provinces of Grand Bassa, River Cess and parts of Sinoe counties. Kouwenhoven is suspected of war crimes and bypassing an international arms embargo on the West African country that emerged from a 14 year civil war in August 2003. Under a peace deal, Taylor was given exile in Nigeria. "Several witnesses have made statements to the National Criminal Investigations Bureau relating to arms supplies and the involvement of the Dutchman in the years 2001, 2002 and 2003, a period during which UN arms embargoes were in force," said the Public Prosecutor. The United Nations imposed a ban on arms exports in Liberia in 2001 to stop then-president Taylor from using foreign exchange earnings from timber and diamonds for arms purchases. A UN panel of experts report on the trade in diamonds and arms in Sierra Leone first raised suspicions over Kouwenhoven's activities in the region in 2000. In a separate report by the British NGO Global witness in 2003, further connections were made between Kouwenhoven and the illegal arms trade. According to Global Witness spokesperson Alex Yearsley, Kouwenhoven was a close confident and ally of Taylor and helped guarantee the former warlord's survival. "Without having the supply of cash brought in [by the company] it would have been hard for Taylor to operate and stay in power as long as he did," Yearsley said. Global Witness said it hoped this latest might serve as a precedent for more prosecutions against sanction-breakers. "It is the first time a prosecuting authority has taken steps of this nature against somebody violating specific UN sanctions," Yearsley said. "It reflects an important precedent."