Final Verdict: Swiss Supreme Court Upholds Alieu Kosiah’s 20-Year Sentence for Lofa War Crimes

Court clears ex-ULIMO commander of crimes against humanity but leaves sentence intact

Monrovia – Former ULIMO commander Alieu Kosiah will serve the full 20 years in prison for atrocities committed in Lofa County during Liberia’s civil war, after Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court upheld his war crimes conviction in a ruling made public Friday.

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By Rodney Sieh

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The decision makes final the first war crimes conviction ever handed down by a Swiss civilian court. It is also the first conviction anywhere of a Liberian for war crimes committed during the country’s two civil wars, which ran from 1989 to 2003 and killed an estimated 250,000 people.

Kosiah was found guilty of crimes committed in Lofa between 1993 and 1995, including killing civilians and ordering their killing, rape, using a child soldier, ordering pillage, cruel treatment of civilians, and desecrating the body of a dead civilian through an act of cannibalism.

The Appeals Chamber of Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court had found that those crimes alone would justify 150 years in prison. The sentence was reduced to 20 years, the maximum allowed under Swiss law.

Crimes Against Humanity Charge Thrown Out

In a partial win for the defense, the Supreme Court acquitted Kosiah of crimes against humanity, a conviction the Appeals Chamber added in 2023. The court ruled that the crimes against humanity provision, which entered Swiss law in 2011, cannot be applied to acts committed between 1993 and 1995.

The acquittal does not affect his 20-year sentence or his expulsion from Switzerland once he has served it.

Lawyers for the victims welcomed the final conviction but criticized the acquittal.

“Today the survivors of Alieu Kosiah’s crimes have final justice, more than 30 years after they suffered and twelve years after his arrest,” said Alain Werner, Director of Civitas Maxima, the Geneva-based group that represents victims in the case. “When this case began, it was often their word against his, about events during a brutal and traumatic civil war. Today Switzerland’s highest court has confirmed that they were believed.”

Werner said his team was “deeply disappointed” by the acquittal, arguing that civilians in Lofa were deliberately targeted — killed, raped, looted and forced to carry loads for fighters — in a widespread and systematic attack.

“What happened in Lofa between 1993 and 1995 is the very definition of a crime against humanity,” he said.

Twelve Years in Detention

Kosiah settled in Switzerland in the late 1990s and was arrested in November 2014 after Liberian victims filed a criminal complaint through their lawyers. He has been in detention ever since.

Survivors traveled from Liberia to testify against him during the investigation and at both of his trials.

The case was built with the help of the Global Justice and Research Project (GJRP), a Liberian organization that has documented civil war crimes for more than a decade. Together, Civitas Maxima and GJRP have contributed to six criminal trials in four countries linked to Liberia’s civil wars, resulting in five convictions.

‘Our People Should Not Have to Keep Looking to Europe’

The ruling once again throws a spotlight on Liberia’s failure to try its own war criminals. More than two decades after the war ended, no war crimes trial has been held on Liberian soil. Armed groups recruited more than 21,000 children during the conflict.

Liberia has committed to establishing a War and Economic Crimes Court, but the court has yet to hear a case.

GJRP Director Hassan Bility thanked Swiss authorities for more than ten years of commitment that allowed Liberian survivors to take part directly in the trials, but said justice should be delivered at home.

“These crimes were committed in Liberia by a Liberian against Liberians, and the judgment was delivered thousands of miles away,” Bility said. “Our people should not have to keep looking to Europe or the United States for justice. It is more than time for these trials to take place in Liberia, and for the War and Economic Crimes Court to start its work.”

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[OPTIONAL: Reaction from the War and Economic Crimes Court office, the Ministry of Justice, or Lofa County residents/lawmakers.]