Agent: Campbell 'flirted' with Charles Taylor
Updated on 09 August 2010
Model Naomi Campbell's evidence to the war crimes trial of former Liberian leader Charles Taylor, regarding a gift of diamonds in 1997 has been questioned twice in court following testimonies from her former agent Carole White and the actress Mia Farrow.
Ms White is the latest in a line of witnesses in a trial where the prosecution is attempting to prove that Taylor received "blood diamonds" from rebels in Sierra Leone.
The diamonds are alleged to have funded a decade-long civil war in the country in which tens of thousands lost their lives.
Linking Mr Taylor to the gift of diamonds at the dinner in South Africa is a key aim for the prosecution, which claims former the Liberian dictator gave Ms Campbell a "blood diamond" during the trip.
Ms Campbell's former agent Carole White told the court at The Hague that the model received the diamonds from Charles Taylor in September 1997, after a dinner hosted by Nelson Mandela at this residence and attended by guests including Ms Campbell, Mr Taylor, herself and Mia Farrow.
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Mia Farrow also gave evidence earlier today, saying that Ms Campbell had talked of receiving a "huge diamond" from Mr Taylor.
While last week Ms Campbell would only say she received a pouch of "small, dirty looking stones" in the middle of the night from men she did not recognise - and stressed she did not know the gift was diamonds, or that it was from Charles Taylor until others suggested it - Ms White today suggested something very different.
A group photo taken at the charity dinner in South Africa in 1997. During the hearing Campbell was asked to write the names of those pictured on the photo. She stands in white to the left of Charles Taylor; Mia Farrow is second from right.
She said that the diamond gift was discussed over dinner, when Ms Campbell was "excited", before the two women received the gift from men they invited into their guesthouse later that night.
She told the court: "While we were eating Naomi leant back and Charles Taylor lent forward and Naomi was very excited, and she told me he's going to give me some diamonds."
The logistics of getting the diamonds to Ms Campbell were then discussed between the model and a man Ms White believed to be Charles Taylor's minister of defence. Later that night, the women waited up for the delivery excitedly, before inviting the men in when they eventually arrived.
"I heard some chink noises on my window like somebody throwing pebbles at the window," Ms White said.
"So I went over to see what that was and I opened the window and looked down, and there were two guys down on the ground. They said: 'We have something for Ms Campbell, we have something for Ms Campbell, can you let us in?'"
While Ms White said she was uneasy about the men, particularly as sentries who had been patrolling the garden earlier seemed to have disappeared, Ms Campbell convinced her to let them in.
"The guys came in and they sat down in the lounge, and we sat opposite and gave them a Coca Cola each and they then took out a quite a scruffy paper and handed it to Ms Campbell and said: 'You know, these are the diamonds.'
"And she opened them and showed them to me and they were quite disappointing, because they were not shiny."
More on Charles Taylor war crimes trial from Channel 4 News
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The men then left, and the women went to bed, although Ms White said she remained concerned over the diamonds and in the morning convinced Ms Campbell to give them away to the former head of one of Nelson Mandela's children's charities, Jeremy Ractcliffe. Ms Campbell later did this.
Ms White said: "I was quite worried about the gift because if she took them with her, and took them out of South Africa, I believed it would be me that would have to carry them and believed it was illegal to take diamonds from South Africa out of country. I don't know how I knew it but I did know it."
So the pair gave the diamonds to Mr Ractliffe the following day, Ms White said, something Mr Ractliffe has separately admitted.
Ms Campbell merely said in her testimony that she received the gift in the night after knocking on her bedroom door.
Ms White confirmed to the court that she is currently pursuing entirely separate legal proceedings against Naomi Campbell, who she no longer represents as her model agent. Ms Campbell has also counter-sued her, she said.
Courtenay Griffiths, who is defending Taylor, challenged Ms White's claims.
"You have a very powerful motive for lying about Miss Campbell," he said.
"You didn't come to this court with clean hands, you came with an agenda."
Ms White's evidence follows Mia Farrow's testimony earlier today. Both of the women's testimonies directly contradict that of Naomi Campbell, who last week also appeared at the trial.
Mia Farrow told the court Naomi Campbell had arriving in an "excited" mood at breakfast the day after the diamond gift described by Ms White.
She said, before even sitting down Ms Campbell began the tale of how: "In the night, she had been awakened, some men were knocking at the door and they had been sent by Charles Taylor and they were giving her...they had given her a huge diamond. And she said she intended to give the diamond to Nelson Mandela's children's charities."
Mr Taylor is accused of being given the diamonds by rebels a month before his trip to South Africa, and is also accused by prosecutors of giving Ms Campbell a large rough cut diamond after a dinner hosted by Nelson Mandela.
The following month, the military junta in Sierra Leone received a large shipment of weapons. Mr Taylor has denied all the charges against him, describing the allegations of instigating murder, rape, mutilation, sexual slavery and conscription of child soldiers as "nonsense".
He is accused of the offences above during wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, in which more than 250,000 people were killed.
The prosecution hopes the celebrities' testimony will support its claims that Taylor dealt in "blood diamonds" when he supported rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war, which Taylor denies.
