Swiss supreme court upholds Liberian ex-rebel commander’s 20-year sentence

What the report says

Switzerland’s supreme court has upheld the 20-year prison sentence of former Liberian rebel commander Alieu Kosiah, while overturning a separate conviction for crimes against humanity. The ruling, published on Friday but dated September 28, leaves intact the war-crimes findings that made his case a landmark in Swiss courts.

According to Al Jazeera’s report, Kosiah was convicted in 2021 by Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court for abuses linked to Liberia’s first civil war, which lasted from 1989 to 2003 and killed about 250,000 people. The court later ruled in 2023 that he was also guilty of crimes against humanity, but the federal supreme court said that charge could not be applied retroactively because it was added to Swiss law in 2011. Switzerland’s legal system allows prosecution under universal jurisdiction for serious international crimes even when they were committed abroad.

The upheld conviction concerns war crimes committed between 1993 and 1995, when Kosiah was a commander in the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy. The original verdict found that he ordered or took part in killings of civilians and unarmed soldiers, as well as rape, child-soldier deployment, looting and cruel treatment. Kosiah had lived in Switzerland since the late 1990s and was arrested there in 2014.

Victims’ advocates said the decision confirms the first war-crimes conviction by a Swiss civilian court and the first such conviction of a Liberian for crimes from the civil wars, while also expressing disappointment over the overturned humanity charge.