'Blood Diamonds' arrest sheds light over grim African trade
Source: CNN
'Blood Diamonds' arrest sheds light over grim African trade
By Tim Lister, CNN
Updated 1127 GMT (1827 HKT) August 31, 2015
Malaga, Spain (CNN)—Last Friday, a 64-year old Belgian citizen, Michel Desaedeleer, was waiting to board a flight from Malaga in southern Spain to New York. But his name registered on a Europe-wide database of arrest warrants and he was detained by police at the airport, according to Spain's Interior Ministry.
The accusation against Desaedeleer, who also holds U.S. citizenship, is that he profited from the illicit trade of "blood diamonds" during the civil war that ravaged Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2002. But it's only in recent years that a case against him has been put together by Belgian authorities, and it's largely based on eyewitness testimony.
Desaedeleer is suspected of having participated with former Liberian President Charles Taylor and the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) led by Foday Sankoh in Sierra Leone in a scheme to mine diamonds illegally in the district of Kono in eastern Sierra Leone.
The warrant for Desaedeleer's arrest was based on testimony gathered by a Swiss-based NGO, Civitas Maxima from witnesses who were in Kono between 1999 and 2001. According to a statement from Spanish police, the allegation is that Desaedeleer "would have been one of the supervisors in charge of overseeing the extraction works on site" at the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2000.
Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/31/europe/blood-diamonds/index.html
[center]
Michel Desaedeleer [/center]