Charles Taylor, Naomi Campbell, and Blood Diamonds

by Libby Pelham | More from this Blogger

24 Aug 2010 07:13 PM

First off, you may be thinking "Who is Charles Taylor?" Taylor is the former president of Liberia. Lest you think Taylor is a good guy, let me give you a little background. Taylor was educated at Bentley College in the U.S. before returning to his native Liberia to work for the government. When they found out he was embezzling money, he fled to Libya and became a guerilla. He came back to Liberia in the late '80s and overthrew the government that he had fled from with a civil war. He then took control of the country and was eventually elected president.

The really bad part was that during his relatively short tenure (1997 until 2003), he was accused of crimes against humanity for his part in the Sierra Leone Civil War. Right now, he is being held at a U.N. detention unit in The Hague and is currently on trial.

You might be thinking okay, not very socially conscious of him to say the least, but where does Naomi Campbell come in and what are blood diamonds. Blood diamonds are those that are mined in war zones and sold on the black market to fund war activity, usually that of the guy invading the country. In this case, it was Taylor who was accused of backing the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone by giving the RUF weapons in exchange for blood diamonds. The RUF has lead an unsuccessful eleven year war in Sierra Leone that has killed thousands people and left thousands more homeless.

Okay, what does Naomi Campbell have to do with all this? Campbell was called to appear as a witness at the trial because she allegedly received uncut blood diamonds from Taylor as a gift at a dinner in 1997. She was ratted out by actress Mia Farrow who was also at the dinner, held in honor of Nelson Mandela.

Campbell said she was given "dirty-looking" stones at the dinner. She also said that she didn't think blood diamonds existed in 1997 when she received the "stones." Actually, the word was coined later. But, call them what you like, the fact still exists that Taylor got the diamonds for supplying arms.

Campbell claims she gave the diamonds to Jeremy Ratcliffe, the head of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund and he still had the diamonds. The charity denied, but Ratcliffe eventually confessed to having them and just resigned. He has turned the diamonds over to the police, but is still under investigation as it is illegal in South Africa to own uncut diamonds.

(This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

Learn more about Libby Pelham

Libby Pelham is a web designer/freelance writer located in Memphis, TN. She has a beautiful little boy, Will, born in July of 2004.

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