High Court orders retrial in Liberian war crimes case

The High Court on Tuesday tore up a lower court decision which found a Dutch businessman not guilty of war crimes and smuggling weapons into Liberia in 2002 and 2003, breaking a UN embargo.


Guus Kouwenhoven was freed by the Den Bosch appeal court in 2008, which said there was ‘a major lack of evidence’ against him. A lower court had sentenced him to eight years in jail for weapons trading in 2006.
But the High Court said on Tuesday that the appeal court was wrong to refuse to hear two key witnesses who could only give evidence anonymously and ordered the case to be heard again.

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