Mr. Kosiah is accused of murder, cannibalism, sexual enslavement, recruitment of child-soldiers, forced labour and looting in Lofa.
Alieu Kosiah commanded rebels in mid-1993 to kill a schoolteacher in Foya, Lofa County, and eat his heart, according to testimony in Mr Kosiah’s war crimes trial on Wednesday in this Swiss Alpine city.
The allegation was made by a man, one of the seven victims known in the case as plaintiffs, who brought the complaint against Mr Kosiah, a former general of United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO).
New Narratives has agreed to the plaintiffs’ request to conceal their identities because they fear retaliation.
The plaintiff told the three-judge panel of the Swiss Federal Criminal Court that he was a resident of Foya from 1993 to 1995, when ULIMO occupied the district.
He said he witnessed Mr Kosiah and other ULIMO commanders beat teacher David Ndiminin to death in retaliation for him telling a humanitarian delegation that ULIMO had looted the Foya Borma Hospital, a major facility in the district.
The plaintiff said Mr Kosiah and other ULIMO commanders then butchered Mr Ndiminin, ripped out his heart and ate it. He said the other rebels who took part in the murder of Mr Ndiminin were Kunti K., Daykue, “Mammie Wata,” Fahnboy and “Ugly Boy.”
The plaintiff said Ugly Boy, whose real name was Talata Sheriff, killed the “huge, hairy and handsome” teacher of the Free Pentecostal Global Mission in Foya. Sherrif went by another alias, “Saah Chue,” a Kissi phrase that translates into “the firstborn with an axe”.
“The highest-ranking officer on the ground that day was Alieu Kosiah,” the man told the three-judge panel hearing the case. “He (Kosiah) was furious. He kicked him (Ndiminin). The other ULIMO officers kicked him, too, and they took him at the Foya airstrip,” he said.
“They took out his heart and carried it to Ugly Boy’s house. Kosiah received a piece of the heart.” He told the court rebels threw Mr Ndiminin’s body on the runway of the Foya airfield and later civilians buried him in a shallow grave. By James Harding Giahyue
