LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Naomi Campbell flirted with Liberia’s former president across the dinner table at Nelson Mandela’s presidential mansion in 1997 and boasted the following morning that Charles Taylor had given her a huge diamond during the night, Mia Farrow and another witness testified at Mr. Taylor’s war crimes trial Monday.
Prosecutors hope testimony from Miss Farrow, the actress-turned-human rights activist, and from Miss Campbell’s estranged former modeling agent will help tie Mr. Taylor to the illicit “blood diamond” trade that fueled Sierra Leone’s civil war. Both contradicted Miss Campbell’s account from the witness stand last week that she did not know the nature or value of what she had received.
The episode was a surreal interlude of glamour in a grim case focused on murder and mutilation in the jungles of West Africa.
Mr. Taylor says he is innocent of 11 war-crimes charges linked to allegations he supported rebels during Sierra Leone’s vicious 11-year civil war, which ended in 2002 with an estimated 100,000 dead.
He has dismissed suggestions he was involved in the diamond trade as “complete, complete nonsense.”
Miss Farrow, however, recounted what she called the “unforgettable” memory of an excited Miss Campbell coming down for breakfast the morning after Mr. Mandela’s dinner party, so excited she could hardly sit.
“She said, ’Oh my God, last night I was awakened by men knocking at the door and it was men sent by Charles Taylor and he sent me a huge diamond,’” Miss Farrow said.
Miss Campbell, who resisted appearing before the war-crimes court for months, testified under subpoena Thursday that she was given several small, “dirty-looking” stones by men she didn’t know after the function in Pretoria.
Miss Campbell, the British supermodel, said she hadn’t known they were diamonds or who sent them, and said Miss Farrow was the one who suggested the gift was from Mr. Taylor.
Defense lawyers accused the prosecution of calling the unlikely witnesses as a publicity stunt to raise the profile of the trial, which has gone on for more than two years. Mr. Taylor himself was on the stand for seven months, portraying himself as an African liberator and statesman who sought to bring stability and peace to his turbulent corner of the continent.
Mr. Taylor’s chief counsel, Courtenay Griffiths, said Miss Farrow was unlikely to remember accurately what happened at a breakfast 13 years ago. He noted that Miss Campbell received three uncut diamonds, not the single diamond Miss Farrow insisted she heard Campbell talk about.
The defense also suggested Miss Farrow’s credibility was tainted by her activism, particularly her campaigns for the victims of Africa’s wars.
Miss Farrow, 65, conceded that she had not seen the diamond or diamonds herself and that Miss Campbell might not have used the word “huge.” But she insisted remembering Miss Campbell mentioned only a single diamond.
South African businessman Jeremy Ractliffe, the former head of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, confirmed last week he had three stones he had received from Miss Campbell to donate to charity after the 1997 dinner. He said he hadn’t done anything with them because he feared that a blood diamond scandal might attach to Mr. Mandela or Miss Campbell as a result. He now has handed them over to South African authorities, and they have been identified as uncut diamonds, but their origins are unknown.
In court, Judge Julia Sebutinde asked Miss Farrow whether it was possible she might have seen the 2006 movie “Blood Diamond” and been influenced by its plot, which centers on a single large diamond.
But Miss Farrow denied any suggestion that she was confusing reality with Hollywood.
Agent Carole White, who fell out with Miss Campbell several years ago, told the court that Mr. Taylor and her then-client enjoyed each other’s company at the dinner table.
“I think she was flirting with him, and he was flirting back,” she said.
At one point during the meal, Ms. White said, Miss Campbell leaned back to speak to her. She “was very excited, and she told me he was going to give her some diamonds,” Ms. White told the court.
She said Miss Campbell later appeared disappointed when she saw that the uncut diamonds were “not very impressive and not enormously big.”
But under cross examination, Mr. Griffiths strongly challenged Ms. White’s testimony.
“You have a very powerful motive for lying,” he said, noting that Ms. White is suing Miss Campbell for millions of dollars over an alleged breach of contract.
Miss Campbell has served community service twice after pleading guilty in minor assault cases. A few of her former aides and maids have sued her, accusing her of violent outbursts and usually settling on undisclosed terms.
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