President Charles Taylor of Liberia provided support to the RUF, providing arms and training to rebels in exchange for diamonds mined in Sierra Leone. The Special Court for Sierra Leone indicted Taylor in 2003, charging him with 17 counts of the following crimes:
- Extermination, murder, rape, enslavement and other inhuman acts such as crimes against humanity;
- Violations of common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and of the Second Additional Protocol: Acts of terrorism, collective punishments against the civilian population, violence to life and person, outrages upon personal dignity, pillage and abductions;
- Other serious violations of international humanitarian law, namely the recruitment of children under 15 years into armed forces.
Besides Sierra Leone, blood diamonds have also been used to fund conflicts in Liberia, Angola, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly known as Zaire) and the Republic of Congo.
In 1965, Colonel Joseph Mobutu seized power and proclaimed himself president from 1965 to 1996 of what he then renamed Zaire. Throughout his regime, revenues from ZaireGÇÖs vast diamond resources went for two purposes: they were either siphoned off to MobutuGÇÖs private bank accounts or were used by Mobutu as benefits awarded to foreign governments and foreign companies supportive to his efforts to remain in power. After 30 years of Mobutu looting his country's treasury and committing human rights abuses, he was finally overthrown in 1997 during a first round of the Congo War. Ultimately after six years of continued conflict, almost 4 million people lost their lives, half of them children, most killed by disease and famine. A UN panel of experts concluded that foreign interests sustained the war by illegally subsidizing various and numerous militias, in return for gold, diamonds, and other natural resources.
And as reported by The Washington Post, al Qaeda reaped millions of dollars from the illegal sale of diamonds mined by rebels in Sierra Leone. Following the 1998 al Qaeda bombings of US embassies in Africa, the US froze $220 million in Taliban and al Qaeda gold deposited in the Federal Reserve. As a result, al Qaeda began to GÇ£systematically move its money out of banking systems and into commoditiesGÇ¥, i.e., diamonds. GÇ£The ties of former Liberian president Charles Taylor to al Qaeda have been corroborated by the FBI and the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra LeoneGÇ¥ writes WaPo. For years up to and beyond Sept. 11, 2001, Liberia's diamond trade proved to be integral to funding al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to include Hezbollah. Al Qaeda paid commissions to Taylor for his brokering these diamond sales. Taylor also harbored al Qaeda members responsible for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Liberia.
The movie GÇ£Blood DiamondGÇ¥ tells a necessary story as it not only makes people aware of the tremendous death and suffering behind blood diamonds, but makes them also want to question the origin of the diamonds they are buying. No one wants to be an unwitting accomplice in the human toll resulting from wars fueled by blood diamonds. Thus with this movieGÇÖs release and with it being the holiday season especially, the World Diamond Council was quick to spending over $15 million in a public relations campaign to remind consumers that today, thanks to the UN-mandated Kimberley Process, less than 1% of the worldGÇÖs diamonds are blood diamonds.
What the movie unfortunately does not delve into is how foreign interests, happy to cut deals with murderous military commanders, sustained the conflict. One such foreign interest came from televangelist Pat Robertson.
During the regime of LiberiaGÇÖs Charles Taylor, Pat Robertson in December 1998 created the for-profit Freedom Gold Limited, which was chartered in the Cayman Islands and operated out of Virginia Beach with Robertson serving as its president and sole director. In May 1999, Robertson along with Taylor and key members of TaylorGÇÖs cabinet signed a mining agreement whereby exploration and mining rights in a southeastern area of Liberia were granted. In the agreement, Robertson guaranteed the Taylor regime a 10% equity interest in the company, and the right to purchase at least 15% of the shares after the exploration period. Robertson invested over $8 million into the venture with Taylor.
Before Taylor and Liberia, Robertson was in business with ZaireGÇÖs Mobutu, who gave RobertsonGÇÖs for-profit African Development Company the rights to mine diamonds and gold in Zaire during the 1990GÇÖs. In 1994, Robertson appealed to his 700 Club viewers to donate to his tax-exempt organization, Operation Blessing, and its operation of cargo planes supposedly flying in relief supplies to the victims of the genocide in Rwanda. But according to a Virginian-Pilot article published in 1997, two Operation Blessing pilots revealed that the cargo planes were instead used exclusively to haul diamond-mining equipment to RobertsonGÇÖs mines in Zaire, not for humanitarian purposes.
Pat Robertson gives exclusively to Republicans and as reported at VPAP has given $637,500 to VirginiaGÇÖs Republican candidates since 1997, to include the following contributions of interest to us here in Hampton Roads:
- To Bob McDonnell, $5,000 to his 1999 campaign for Delegate and $55,000 to his 2005 campaign for Attorney General
- To Jerry Kilgore, $15,000 to his 2001 campaign for Attorney General and $47,500 to his 2005 campaign for Governor
- To Bill Bolling, $10,000 to his 2005 campaign for Lt. Governor
- To Frank Wagner, $5,000 to his 2000 campaign for Senate
- To Sal Iaquinto, $5,000 to his 2005 campaign for Delegate
Pat RobertsonGÇÖs money not only funds Republican campaigns but apparently funds turning a blind eye to criminal prosecution.
VirginiaGÇÖs Office of Consumer Affairs determined that Robertson had willfully violated the CommonwealthGÇÖs charitable solicitation laws and pushed for criminal prosecution against Robertson in 1999. However, Attorney General Mark Earley, a Republican who two years earlier had received his largest campaign contribution in the amount of $35,000 from Pat Robertson, overruled recommendations for his prosecution.
Along with the $35,000 Mark Earley received in 1997 for his Attorney General campaign, he also received from Pat Robertson $25,000 in 2000 and $35,000 in 2001 towards his gubernatorial campaign.
So just as folks question where their diamonds come from, so too should they be asking from where their electeds get their cash. And for AG Bob McDonnell, Lt. Gov Bill Bolling, Senator Frank Wagner and Delegate Sal Iaquinto, one such source is Pat Robertson, a man who forges business partnerships with two of worldGÇÖs most ruthless tyrants, convicted war criminals, blood diamond traffickers, human rights abusers, and in the case of LiberiaGÇÖs Charles Taylor, a man complicit in al Qaeda terrorist activities against the United States.
Taylor, a multi-millionaire, who in March this year tried to escape from a Nigerian compound to Cameroon, now faces a provisional trial date of April 2, 2007 in the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Just as the movie GÇ£Blood DiamondGÇ¥ brought attention to the atrocities surrounding the trade of blood diamonds, so too do I hope TaylorGÇÖs trial will bring attention to the contribution foreign interests had in fueling of AfricaGÇÖs bloody wars.