Crane walks with the devil
By Ben Baynton, contributing writer
Posted on September 28, 2006

As the chief prosecutor for the special court on Sierra Leone, David Crane said he walked the countryside to listen to the victims’ intensely personal encounters with the stories that make up genocide.

“The devil does walk the earth, and he lives in West Africa,” he said.

So began the lecture presented by Crane, a visiting professor of law at Syracuse University.

The special court was created in the aftermath of the civil war during the 1990s in Sierra Leone. The court was created with a mandate from the United Nations “to prosecute those who bore the greatest responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Crane said. 

The countries Libya, Burkina Faso and Liberia planned to install a puppet regime so that they could filch Sierra Leone’s large diamond caches.

Sierra Leone is a war-torn country because of a geological rarity that brings diamonds to the surface.

Usually diamonds are buried a mile or so underground. This geological rarity makes it easier for people and countries to extract them.

The focus of Crane’s lecture was not the political aspects, though. Crane gained a greater understanding of what victims need courts to do to help them begin healing the scars of years of violence by listening to personal accounts. 
 
He could not forget the stories of how rebels would surround a town and would then force the children to kill their parents. This act would eventually make these children soldiers, and at the same time, lose the memory of their names.

“We have an entire generation in West Africa without hope,” he said of those child-soldiers.  “So why did we wait? That’s the $10 question.”

Crane constantly reiterated that the world community needs expedient justice. “The U.N. is physically incapable of holding a special court,” Crane said. This critique is due to what Crane believes is the multi-layered nature of the U.N. bureaucracy and the difficulties in hiring or firing personnel in the United Nations, said Crane.
 
However, Crane applauded the United Nations for creating the special court for Sierra Leone.

The Sierra Leone court is different from other war crimes tribunals in that it is not a part of the United Nations, but receives funding and its mandate from the United Nations. 

Crane’s most important point was not about West Africans.

“Any of you could have done what I did in West Africa,” Crane said. “The challenge was that no one cared.”

Crane talked about the lack of interest he faced from both politicians and the press. “The press was not interested in our work in West Africa.”

George Nickels, a retired Presbyterian minister and licensed social counselor, said the speech was remarkable.

“I hope it [the lecture] drives us to be better,” Nickel continued, “to advocate and intervene wherever we can.”

But Crane is not so optimistic.

“It’s a rare thing when the world comes together and seeks justice.”