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FREETOWN, Sierra Leone – The hearings in the war crimes trial of Gibril Massaquoi got underway on Tuesday after a two week delay because of judges’ illness.
The court, held at a secret location, as it had been in Monrovia, heard from three witnesses – a woman and two men. Defence and prosecution teams tried to establish whether Massaquoi could have been in Liberia to commit crimes in 2003 as many Liberian witnesses claimed but while Massaquoi was under witness protection in Freetown.
The second witness, codenamed “21”, to protect him from intimidation was called by the Defence team. A male he had been a close friend of Massaquoi whom he got to know him in 1999 after Massaquoi was freed from prison here.