Prosecution witness Issac Mongor in the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor has admitted killing at lest one dozen people in Sandiaru village behind Kailahun town.
The defence counsel questioned the violent nature of the witness which he said people were accusing the witness for thereby leading to the killing of the 50 people.
But the witness denied by giving his estimation of killing about one dozen people who were trying to escape from Sandiaru.
Because of this the defence counsel told the court the witness was demoted by Foday Sankoh but the witness denied it stating that “I was not in any position at that particular time to say that I was demoted from a particular position. I was just a Front line commander at that particular time and the killing of those people was through an order, so I don’t think I was called upon to come and to be demoted from any position. They did not demote me at all and I never went through such discussions with Foday Sankoh.
Issa Mongor admitted to the court that he was once investigated but it was based on the particular subject of the killing of the people at Sandiaru but that they were about to kill him for a different purpose.
The killing in Sandiaru the witness disclosed was done in 1992 when he was acting as the battle group commander.
Questioned about him giving orders to other fighters? The witness denied as he said he was getting orders from above.
Giving reasons for the killing of the people who tried to escape the witness said “Those people came from Guinea. We had had instructions, because at that time we received information, regarding the border between Sierra Leone and Guinea and the area we occupied, that people were about to move from that side to attack our position, so we were on security alert and we had had instructions that anybody who was coming from that side, coming to our own side, we should deal with that person and we shouldn’t spare the person’s life. So that was the area the people came from.”
Stressing that they were dealing with fighters, “but civilians too had their own roles that they played, because normally it is civilians who come and take information and then carry those information to other people. So we as fighters, we knew that those are the things that normally obtain during a war.”
Digging into the command responsibility of the witness during the war it was disclosed through the witness statement, that Terry Munyard revealed that the witness was a training commandant in Liberia for all fighters who were to attack Sierra Leone”.
That he came with the first team of fighters that attacked Sierra Leone in the beginning of the war and that the witness was also made battle group commander but that he was not next to Foday Sankoh.
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