Liberian war criminal lived in Netherlands for 12 years

A war criminal from Liberia lived in the Netherlands for 12 years, with a residency permit and a Dutch passport, without being detected by the authorities, NOS reports. Kunti Kamara, 47, lived in the Netherlands between 2001 and 2013. On Wednesday, a court in Paris sentenced him to life in prison for torture and crimes against humanity.

Kamara was commander of the ULIMO Liberation Front in Liberia in the early nineties. In 1993 and 1994, he participated in “massive and systematic torture” of the civilian population, including cannibalism, executions, and rape. He had people perform forced labor and used women as sex slaves, according to the investigation by the French judiciary in recent years.

Kumara applied for asylum in the Netherlands in 2001, allegedly with a false identity. He received a residency permit in 2005. He took language lessons, was educated, and got a job in a hotel. The Dutch authorities apparently did not realize he was a war criminal. Kumara received Dutch citizenship and the accompanying Dutch passport in 2012.

In 2013, he moved to Belgium, and then to France in 2016. The Liberian investigation group GJRP and Civitas Maxima, a Geneva-based organization that investigates war criminals, tracked him down there. Civitas Maxima filed a complaint in France, and the French authorities arrested Kamara in September 2018.

According to NOS, the Dutch authorities were alerted to Kamara’s dubious background at least twice. In 2015, Switzerland asked the Netherlands whether Kamara could testify in a case against another Liberian. And in 2016, a Liberian victim reported to the Netherlands and made serious allegations against Kamara. It is unknown whether the Dutch authorities took action at the time.

“Kamara was arrested in France in September 2018. And an alleged victim of his already reported to the Dutch authorities in September 2016,” Alain Werner, director of Civitas Maxima, said to NOS. “Why didn’t the Netherlands investigate this man, who has a Dutch passport, in high gear in the two intervening years?”

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) would not comment to NOS about Kamara’s case. “We do not respond to individual files,” a spokesperson said. The Ministry of Justice and Security also did not comment.