By O WEI LAKEMFA
SUPER  British model Naomi Campbell initially declined when  invited to testify against former Liberian president, Charles Taylor at his ongoing trial  at the United Nations special court for Sierra  Leone in the Hague.

She knew it was a set up; that  the desperate prosecution wants to use her to nail Taylor. But when on July 1, 2010, the lady that turns heads at gatherings was subpoenaed with a  threat of being sent to jail for seven years if she refused to testify, she flew out to the Hague.

Born on May 22, 1970, Naomi is street and business wise with a 1994 novel, Swan in the market and a personal company, The Design House Of Naomi Campbell.

A staunch supporter of the Labour Party, Naomi  is a strong willed fighter  for equality, the poor, children and African causes. Where others choose to keep quiet on racism and simply make money  on  the white-dominated cat walk,  she speaks out. Last year she told the media “You know, the American president  may be black, but as a black  woman, I am still an exception in the business, I always  have to work harder to be equally treated”

Naomi who never knew her father,  adopted Quincy Jones and Chris Blackwell as her father, and Nelson Mandela as her grandfather. She enmeshes  herself  in charity work with an admittedly, black or political bias. She helped to raise $11 million  for the Hurricane Katrina  victims in the United States and participates in projects like  the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, the Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation, the UNESCO Orphanage in Jamaica and Fidel Castro’s   Cuban Children Foundation.

Also, she has been involved  in brushes with the law and courts  partly due to her temper and also because she is a rich black woman with an independent mind. She successfully sued the Daily Mirror for invading her privacy. So Naomi knows what it is to be persecuted and as she watched Taylor’s trial, she could see where the court is headed.

Naomi also knew that unless she testified, her career might be over because modelling is principally a western industry run primarily by western agents, agencies, designers and  fashion houses. The major agencies she models for are the IMG Models in New York, Model Management, London, D’M Management Group in Milan and the Marilyn Agency in Paris.

She had no option but to appear; it was in truth not a summon but a conscription into  the army needed to send Taylor to jail. It is unthinkable that he would be freed; where will he go if he were found  innocent? Certainly, the puppet government of Helen Sirleaf Johnson will not allow him return to Liberia, so what country will accept him? In any case, having been betrayed into the hands of his enemies by the Olusegun Obasanjo government in Nigeria, it is doubtful if he would put his  future in the hands of any African country again.

But Naomi knew  that in going to the Hague, it was not Taylor alone that was on trial, she also was because her conscience will not forgive her  for being part of a white conspiracy to send  a black leader to prison. So on August 2, 2010 she appeared in the UN court, but did not say what the prosecutors wanted her to say.

Naomi testified that in  September 1997  she had attended a charity dinner by the Nelson Mandela Children Foundation and that the international guests had included Taylor. Later in the night, she was woken up by two men who knocked her door and gave her a pouch, saying “A gift for you”.

The pouch she said contained “a few stones (three)  they were very small, dirty looking stones”   She said the next morning over breakfast she mentioned her experience to actress  Mia Farrow and her then agent  Carol White and that one of the two said “that’s obviously Charles Taylor”  She  immediately handed over the stones to the Mandela Children Foundation.

With the key witness who could not recognise uncut diamonds and did not know who sent them to her, the prosecution case appeared in tatters. As to  insinuations that  she handled “blood diamonds” Naomi punctured it by pointing out that back in 1997, there was no such thing as blood diamonds and that the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) which made the  classification began three years later.

Had Naomi  retained the diamonds for herself, she might have been blackmailed, but she had given it to the Mandela Children Foundation with instructions that they be used for impoverished children. But Foundation director, Jeremy Ractliffe through  whom Naomi claimed she had handed the diamonds denied the claims.

The Foundation wrote the court that it “never received a diamond or diamonds from Ms. Campbell or from anyone else.  It would   have been  improper and illegal to have done so”. The denial might have raised new problems for her, but the next day, the  Foundation changed its story and admitted that it had received the diamonds back in 1997. Mr. Ractliffe in whose home the South African police had found the diamonds following a raid, claimed that he denied the receipt in order to protect the Foundation’s image. But it appears he had kept the stones for himself.

Back at the Hague, actress, Farrow claimed that Naomi had told her  the next morning that she had been given a “huge diamond” by Taylor. But as the police raid revealed, they were three small diamonds  not  one “huge diamond” Farrow had claimed.

Ms. White who had given a similar testimony as Farrow, was exposed as bearing a grudge against Campbell whom  she had sued  for alleged breach of contract. Campbell in a reaction to both women declared “I’ve no motive here. Nothing to gain.

I am a black woman who has  and will always support good causes, especially relating to Africa” The truth is that the Sierra Leone rebels did not need Taylor, then president of  a neighbouring country to sell diamonds and buy guns for them; they did that themselves!