Defence counsel for Charles Taylor, Terry Munyard Wednesday during cross examination of the prosecution witness has tried to dig into some inconsistencies of the witness’ evidence.
The witness Issa Mongor in his evidence told the chamber in the Hague that he only recalled visiting camp Zogoda once, but during the cross examination revealed that he indeed visited the camp two times but had forgotten about the second visit.
The witness said that the first visit was during his northern jungle and in 1995 he made another stop at the camp where he spent the night.
Mr Mongor also told the court that there was a meeting at camp Zogoda, with Foday Sankoh as he had ordered his commanders so that he will talk to them with regards to maintaining the jungle. During the meeting again, the witness disclosed, promotions were made and during these promotions “I was also promoted to the rank of major, Mike Lamin, Mohamed Tarawally, Superman, Mosquito, Peter Vandy, Rocky also received promotions. Other commanders received promotions although they were not present during the meeting. The other commanders that were present at this meeting included Issa Sesay and Augustine Gbao.”
With all these inconsistencies the lawyer questioned “can you say you did not recall the number of times you visited camp Zogoda.?” Questioned about how he came to know Foday Sankoh, the witness said he knew Sankoh to be one of the Special Forces who were present on the Executive Ground, but he later knew him through one John Kargbo as John Kargbo was Foday Sankoh’s tribesman.
The witness also revealed that he also knew Foday Sankoh from Gbarnga on the Executive Ground as that was where he came to know him and “I used to see him go to the front line together with Mr Taylor, but at that time I never knew his name Foday Sankoh because that was not how we used to call him as we used to call him Pa Morlai.” The prosecution witness further told the court that Sankoh and Charles Taylor had a special relationship “because Mr Taylor had fought to get Foday Sankoh out of prison in Ghana. Although Foday Sankoh did not give me a particular date but he told me that they went to Libya to train and he had a problem and he was in jail. So, he said it was his brother Mr Taylor who fought to secure his release. Mr Munyard also questioned the witness on training camps which the witness said there were two separate training bases one for the RUF and another for NPFLAdding that 90% of the people trained in the RUF training base were Sierra Leoneans.
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