“Based on a True Story”
Someone should write a script about this:
“PARIS — Did the supermodel Naomi Campbell know that diamonds delivered to her in the night, 13 years ago, were a gift from Charles G. Taylor, then the president of war-torn Liberia? […]
Ms. Campbell, who appeared in court on Thursday, told a panel of judges that two men had brought her several rough diamonds after she met Mr. Taylor at a dinner in South Africa, but that she had no idea of who had sent them.
On Monday, the actress Mia Farrow told a very different story. Ms. Farrow had attended the same dinner, hosted by President Nelson Mandela in Pretoria. She said the next morning, Ms. Campbell arrived at breakfast “excited and happy.” Even before sitting down she announced that she had received “a huge diamond” in the middle of the night.
“Naomi said it came from Charles Taylor,” Ms. Farrow said. “I did not mishear.”
A second witness, Ms. Campbell’s former agent, Carole White, contradicted the model’s account further, telling the court that during the dinner, Ms. Campbell and Mr. Taylor appeared to be flirting. Ms. Campbell was “very excited,” Ms. White said, “and she told me he was going to give her some diamonds.”
Ms. White said that after dinner, she was present during a discussion with Mr. Taylor’s aides on how to get the diamonds for Ms. Campbell because they were in Johannesburg, hours away.
Prosecutors have pursued the trail of so-called conflict diamonds, charging that Mr. Taylor used them to enrich himself and to trade for arms. Earlier witnesses have testified that rebel commanders took rough diamonds from Sierra Leone to Mr. Taylor’s mansion, then left with weapons.
The prosecution’s purpose in calling the three women, who all attended a charity event for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, was to demonstrate that Mr. Taylor was traveling with rough diamonds when he gave some to Ms. Campbell. They are hoping to bolster their claim that in September 1997, Mr. Taylor was on an arms-buying journey that began in South Africa. Mr. Taylor has testified that he never carried, owned, sold or traded diamonds.
Ms. Farrow told the court that she never saw any diamonds and was only repeating what Ms. Campbell had told guests over breakfast. But Ms. White testified with much detail about how she and Ms. Campbell waited in the presidential guest house that night for the promised diamonds to arrive. Eventually two men arrived, taking out “a quite scruffy paper” with unpolished stones, “five or six, I believe,” she said.
The stones were “quite disappointing” because they did not sparkle, Ms. White said. The men left and, discussing the gift, Ms. White and Ms. Campbell concluded that the diamonds were “not very impressive.”
Mr. Taylor’s defense team, in lengthy cross-examination, tried to undermine both witnesses. The lawyers cited Ms. Farrow’s activism on behalf of victims of conflicts in Sudan, Chad and other African countries as evidence that she was biased against Mr. Taylor.”
-from the article on the NYTimes, “Testimony Given by Supermodel Is Challenged at Hague Trial”
