Naomi Campbell testifies on Charles Taylor blood diamond trial

The South African that used to direct Nelson Mandela’s children’s charity program, Jeremy Ractliffe, has admitted that he received three uncut diamonds in 1997 from supermodel Naomi Campbell, and he brought the gems to the police on Thursday.

While testifying in the war crimes trial of Dictator Charles Taylor, the supermodel declared that two men whom she believed to be representing him had given her a pouch containing a few rough diamonds which she gave away to Ractliffe so he could sell them and use the money for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. The first time, Campbell did not admit receiving the gems from Taylor, but than Ractliffe start telling that he had received three small uncut diamonds from her which he had taken because he believed that it was illegal for the supermodel to take them out of the country borders. She had indeed told him to use them for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, but he decided not to, because he did not want the NMCF involved into anything that might have been illegal. He said that he gave the stones to the Hawks, the South African special police. Taylor, the former Liberian president, is accused of traveling to South Africa in 1997 to exchange uncut ‘blood diamonds’ for fire arms for the rebels from Sierra Leone and of helping maintain the long and bloody civil war from that country. Taylor denied having diamonds with him on his trip to South Africa, and his lawyers say that it is not possible, even if there is the possibility that he had given the stones to the supermodel, to link the expensive gift to the fact that he was there to buy arms and ammunition for Sierra Leonean rebels. At first, Campbell denied having received the diamonds from Charles Taylor at the home of Nelson Mandela in 1997, but then she appeared under police protection at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague to tell her story. She told the judges that on the night after the dinner when she met Charles Taylor, two men came to her room and woke her up saying that they had a gift for her, and handed her a small pouch containing a few dirty looking stones. She denied having anything to do with the dictator during or after that dinner and says that she never spoke to him ever since and she told she told chief prosecutor Brenda Hollis that she had given the gems to Ractliffe hoping that the children might benefit from them.

Actress Mia Farrow, who traveled with the supermodel during the 1997 trip and was too a guest at the Mandela home that night, was the one that let the prosecutors know about the “blood diamonds“. Soon after, Carole White, Campbell’s former agent, told them that she was there that night too and was in the room with Campbell when she received half a dozen uncut diamonds. She declared that the model was disappointed with the stones because they did not sparkle like the ones used in jewelry manufacturing. Farrow declared that the next morning Campbell told her over breakfast that she received a huge diamond as a gift from Taylor’s men in the middle of the night. Campbell denied discussing it with the actress and the managers and told the prosecutors that she did not know where the gift may have come from, but one of the two suggested that it was only Taylor that could have given her such an expensive gift. A few weeks ago, the supermodel was invited to Oprah, and when she was asked about this affair she said she did not want to be involved in the case of a man charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, because she did not want to put her family at risk. Gideon Benaim, Campbell‘s lawyer, says that she is only a witness at Taylor’s trial which has been going on for or almost three years at the United Nation’s Special Court for Sierra Leone at the World Court in the Netherlands. The dictator pleaded not guilty to all charges against him and his lawyers say that there is almost no evidence connecting Taylor to the diamonds or the atrocities that killed countless numbers of people from 1997 to 2001.