A Finnish court on Friday acquitted a suspected warlord accused of atrocities in Liberia's civil war, including rapes, ritual murders and the recruitment of child soldiers.
In its ruling, the Pirkanmaa district court found the prosecution had "not proven with sufficient certainty" that Gibril Massaquoi, 52, had been involved in the alleged crimes in the later years of Liberia's second war, which ended in 2003.
At the time, Massaquoi was a senior commander of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a Sierra Leonean rebel group that also fought in Liberia.
Massaquoi, who denied all charges, moved to Finland in 2008 and was arrested there in March 2020 after a rights group investigated his war record.
Defence lawyer Kaarle Gummerus said Massaquoi was "extremely relieved" by the judgement.
"We'll wait a month to see what decision the prosecutor makes with this case and then we'll be able to see what the next six months will be like," he told AFP.
Prosecutor Tom Laitinen told AFP his team had not yet had time to decide whether to appeal the 850-page ruling.
The trial has been closely watched by campaigners who have fought for decades for those who carried out atrocities in Liberia to face justice.
- 'Monumental precedent' -
A probe by rights group Civitas Maxima's into Massaquoi prompted Finnish police to launch an investigation.
At the outset of the trial in February 2021 the group said the "ground-breaking" verdict could set "a monumental precedent".
In the Liberian capital Monrovia, civil rights campaigner Adama Dempster said that regardless of the verdict, he welcomed the fact that the trial had taken place.
"Those who committed hideous crimes during the war, it tells them that they will have their days in court," Dempster told AFP.
"I am happy to know that justice has been rendered," said 30-year-old Natasha Wilson, who was eight when she lost her two brothers in the war.
"I hope others will also be brought to justice."
Defender Kaarle Gummerus said the verdict "will doubtless give a lot to think about regarding how these cases are investigated and prosecuted" for those involved in other Liberian war crimes trials.
"But what kind of precedent this judgement will set for those cases remains to be seen," he told AFP.
Back-to-back civil wars between 1989 and 2003 in the West African nation of five million left 250,000 people dead and millions displaced.
The conflicts were marked by merciless violence and rape, often carried out by drugged-up child soldiers.
So far only a handful of people have been convicted for their part in the conflict, and efforts to establish a war crimes court in the country have stalled.
Former Liberian warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor was imprisoned in 2012 -- but for war crimes committed in neighbouring Sierra Leone, not in his own country.
- 'Angel Gabriel' -
In an unprecedented move, the Finnish court decamped to Monrovia between February and April last year, and again in September, to hear testimony from dozens of witnesses and visit sites where the atrocities allegedly unfolded under Massaquoi's orders.
Massaquoi himself remained in custody in Finland, and followed the proceedings from his cell.
The visits became the first time that testimony in a Liberia war crimes trial was heard in the country.
The Finnish trial thus avoided the problems of bringing witnesses to Europe that have hampered similar Liberian war prosecutions in Switzerland and France.
In villages in northern Liberia, witnesses claimed Massaquoi went under the moniker 'Angel Gabriel' and ordered civilians, including children, to be locked into two buildings which were then torched.
A 4,000-page evidence dossier seen by AFP further detailed mass murders, rapes and cannibalism in Lofa county and the capital Monrovia, and the enslavement of child soldiers.
But Massaquoi's defence highlighted numerous inconsistencies and contradictions over the timings and locations of witness accounts of atrocities.
His lawyers insisted he was in neighbouring Sierra Leone under watch in a UN safehouse at the time.
Massaquoi agreed to give evidence to the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up to investigate war crimes in that country.
He was later granted asylum in Finland and immunity from prosecution over crimes in Sierra Leone, but not Liberia.
Finnish law allows the prosecution of serious crimes committed abroad by a citizen or resident.