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NAOMI CAMPBELL VS. CHARLES TAYLOR: UPDATE

A painting of Charles Taylor and his ex-wife inside his home" Andy Capper, our London Editor, attended Naomi Campbell’s testimony in the trial against former Liberian president Charles Taylor last week in the throbbing heart of The...

A painting of Charles Taylor and his ex-wife inside his home"

Andy Capper, our London Editor, attended Naomi Campbell’s testimony in the trial against former Liberian president Charles Taylor last week in the throbbing heart of The Netherlands--Leidschendam, a small municipality close to The Hague. Andy and Shane Smith traveled to Liberia last year to film The Vice Guide to Liberia, and his ongoing fascination with the country and the tribunal drove him to get a press card so he could witness the trial up close. We called him while he was in a cab fleeing Leidschendam to ask him about Naomi’s performance. He also gave us a Hello! style photo guide of Charles Taylor's house.

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You need one of these if you want to see supermodels and warlords battle it out in court

Vice: Hey Andy, what were you doing at the tribunal?
Andy Capper: I’ve been fascinated by the horrors in Liberia and West Africa for years now, and the film we made and the people I met out there multiplied that fascination by a thousand. When I heard Naomi Campbell was supposed to testify, I thought that was an exciting and ridiculous twist to the trial of one of the most “colorful” alleged dictators/war criminals of all time, so after talking with the Special Court for Sierra Leone press office they arranged for me to get front row seats (thank you Solomon).

Naomi

I sat directly above Naomi Campbell. As everybody’s seen now she was wearing a very conservative beige twin set thing that brought to mind Tippy Hedren in Marnie. Her shoes, which nobody got photos of, were a bit more racy. They were Roman sandal things with heels.

Her necklace looked like one of those Turkish “evil eye” things that all the cabbies in Hackney have hanging from the rear view mirror. Another thing that I didn’t see reported was that she had a small pouch filled with crystals or stones that she would squeeze between her fingers. These I took to be some kind of new age healing device given to her by a billion pound an hour shrink.

Charles Taylor in court

How was it to see Charles Taylor in the flesh?
Well, I was more excited to see him than Naomi Campbell. He sat in the back of the court. As he came in he shook hands with his defense team--there were about seven of them I think. He had a huge gold watch, gold rings, expensive suit, etc. He was extremely well dressed. I’d visited one of his houses in Monrovia when we made the Liberia film and in it there were big oil paintings of Charles and his ex-wife, huge gold eagles, and the actual photo that was shown at the court proceedings of Charles stood very close to Naomi Campbell at the Nelson Mandela fundraiser where the alleged “blood diamond” donation took place. In the trial Naomi said she barely spoke to Charles during the course of the dinner but in this photo at least they look extremely friendly. Photos can often be misleading of course.

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So where does the fascination for Liberia come from?
A friend of mine was very interested in the situation over there, and he told me about it. His name is William Bennett, and he ended up making the soundtrack for the film as well. The situation in Liberia is so incredibly surreal, what with the child soldiers on drugs and cross-dressing cannibals drinking baby’s blood and all. It’s horrific--absolute hell on earth. But it was so atrocious and movie-like that I knew one day I had to go out there just to see how people could do those kinds of things to each other. I think The Vice Guide to Liberia helps to explain how people were so desperate and became complicit in such atrocities. While I was in Liberia, I visited one of Charles Taylor's houses… he obviously wasn't there at the time.

Photos on display in Charles Taylor's house. Note Jacques Chirac at the back.

A portrait of Charles Taylor in his living-room

Andy and Charles Taylor's son, who's a rapper called Bentman

More family snaps

You made friends with an ex-cannibal warlord while you were over there right? And you still keep in touch?
It was a guy called Joshua Milton Blahyi, formally known as General Butt Naked. We text each other occasionally and even added each other on Facebook. Joshua was born into a tribe that worshiped the devil, and cannibalism was second nature, but after the war he became a Christian and now works helping ex-child soldiers and orphans make something of their lives. He’s like a real-life Biblical character who’s turned a really bad life into a good one and I’m not ashamed to say he’s quite an inspirational character for me. One of my most treasured possessions is a signed calendar from him which has “Amazing Grace” at the top of it and his road to redemption story, complete with photos of him naked with an AK-47, leading up to photos of him now with his family at Christmas.

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Andy and Joshua

Wow.
So during a boring bit at the trialI texted him to tell him I was at the trial and he wrote back:"Wow, hope she [Naomi Campbell] speaks the truth and not the lies as the West wants to pin Mr. Taylor at all costs. Anyway if you see him, tell him Joshua Milton Blahyi says 'hi', and the only way to true freedom is to say the TRUTH. And even if you were jailed after for the truth, your soul will enjoy FREEDOM."

So now what for the Taylor trial?
Charles is on trial for tons of things like mass-murder and rape. So the whole blood diamond thing, which was what Naomi Campbell testified about, is just one small part of the whole mess. This trial has been going on since 2007, and the whole story is so surreal that Naomi Campbell’s testimony is just one more surreal element. I don’t think she helped the case at all, and it was a ridiculous thing to ask her to come over to testify. They’ve spent millions of taxpayer’s money on a crazy trial now, in which Naomi Campbell just said nothing of any use. She claimed to have met Taylor at a party in Nelson Mandela’s honor, and that afterward she received a bag of stones in the middle of the night--of which Mia Farrow said they were sure to be blood diamonds and had come from Taylor. In the grand scheme of what Taylor did, Campbell saying Mia Farrow said something is pretty trivial. Now they want Mia Farrow to come testify. If she does, maybe I’ll pop in again to witness more madness.

INTERVIEW: WIEGERTJE POSTMA
PHOTOS: ANDY CAPPER AND MATT NAUSER

WATCH THE VICE GUIDE TO LIBERIA HERE