Swiss Top Court Upholds 20-Year Term for Liberian Ex-Commander

Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court has upheld a 20-year prison sentence for Alieu Kosiah, a former Liberian rebel commander. The court published its verdict on Friday. It is dated September 28.

The judges threw out one part of the earlier ruling. They acquitted Kosiah, now 51, of crimes against humanity. The court said it applied the principle of non-retroactivity strictly. Crimes against humanity became an offence in Swiss law in 2011, so it could not be applied to acts committed earlier.

The charge covers murder, torture, rape and similar atrocities when they are part of a widespread or systematic pattern, not isolated or sporadic incidents.

His conviction for violating the laws of war stands. So does the maximum 20-year custodial sentence. The court rejected an appeal filed against the conviction for acts committed between 1993 and 1995, during the first Liberian civil war.

How the case reached the top court

A Swiss federal court first convicted Kosiah in 2021. He was found guilty of atrocities committed as a commander of the rebel group United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy. The ruling said he ordered or took part in the killing of 17 civilians and two unarmed soldiers. It also covered rape and the use of a child soldier.

The verdict further found that he ordered looting. He also ordered, or personally inflicted, cruel and humiliating treatment of civilians and mishandled corpses.

In 2023 the appeals chamber kept the 20-year sentence for war crimes. It also ruled for the first time in Swiss history that Kosiah was guilty of crimes against humanity. The Federal Supreme Court has now reversed that second finding.

Kosiah settled in Switzerland in the late 1990s and was arrested in 2014. The Liberian civil wars killed about 250,000 people between 1989 and 2003. Switzerland recognises universal jurisdiction, which lets it prosecute suspects of international crimes wherever they were committed.

Reaction from rights groups

The Swiss organisation Civitas Maxima, which works to bring perpetrators of international crimes to justice, said the decision makes final the first war crimes conviction ever handed down by a Swiss civilian court. It called it the first conviction anywhere of a Liberian for war crimes committed in the country's civil wars.

Civitas Maxima director Alain Werner represents victims in the case. "Today the survivors of Alieu Kosiah's crimes have final justice," he said. He added that the group is "deeply disappointed" by the acquittal on crimes against humanity. "What happened in Lofa between 1993 and 1995 is the very definition of a crime against humanity," Werner said.

Source: Al Jazeera