Michel Desadeleer has committed involuntary manslaughter after Hassan Bility’s coached witnesses falsely accused him of war crimes, apparently due to his not being able to withstand the embarrassment with his family, leading to him committing suicide.
The Director of the Global Justice and Research Project (GJRP), Hassan Bility, along with his partner and Director of Civitas Maxima, Alain Werner, have been consistently embarrassing war crimes investigators by recruiting false witnesses from Liberia, coaching them and sending them to give false accounts on many individuals, some of whom include protected witnesses, only for their selfish personal gain.
Victim Desadeleer was a confirmed businessman in Congo, but got maligned by Bility and his group and falsely accused for war crimes.
During the peace agreement talks in Lomé, Togo, Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone met Michel Desadeleer, who was invited by his wife’s Aunt Brenda Brown Schoonover, the United States Ambassador to Togo, from 1998 to 2000 and present during the signing of the Lomé Peace Agreement. At the time Michel Desadeleer was working in Kinshasa, DR Congo, as a Manager in the Produce Business, headquartered in Belgium. He routinely received diamonds as a legitimate form of payment for produce from DR Congo citizens. In return he would repatriate the diamonds to Antwerp, Belgium, where he would sell them and deposit the funds into the corporate account. So he had a great deal of experience in transacting diamond.
He married Amy Johnson while living and working in the State of Maryland, USA. Because of his work in Africa, he and Amy were visiting her aunt, Ambassador Schoonover, in Lomé, and as a result was invited to attend the Lomé Peace Agreement in July 1999. While attending the ceremony, Desadeleer met Sankoh and during the discussions Sankoh mentioned that he was in charge of mining gold and diamond and Sierra Leone, and that the country was open for business. Desadeleer mentioned his knowledge of the diamond business and his transaction experience in Antwerp. Further, he said he knew the Chairman of the Africa Subcommittee of the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., and he may be interested in mining diamond and gold.
As a result, Sankoh offered a contract to Desadeleer as the Chairman of the CMRRD. So, Desadeleer had a legitimate contract and reason to interact with Sankoh legally on a regular basis. With contract in hand, Desadeleer engaged in a joint venture with the US businessman and Chairman of the Africa Subcommittee for the US Chamber of Commerce. They marshalled mining equipment and shipped it to Sierra Leone for mining of gold and diamonds in 1999 and 2001.
During this timeframe, Desadeleer, his business partner and others regularly interacted with Sankoh and other members of the RUF, who were legitimately part of the CMRRD. Unfortunately, at the time, Desadeleer was unaware that Sankoh had signed a similar contract with a number of other individuals for the same mining rights. Nonetheless, Desadeleer did have frequent and legal contact with members of the RUF, who were now members of the Revolutionary United Front Party, a political party formed as a result of the Lomé Peace Agreement.
The Belgium National Police newly formed Diamond Investigations unit were investigating the on-going blood diamond smuggling operations from Sierra Leone and Liberia by Samih Osaily and Aziz Nassour, Lebanese to Antwerp, Belgium, on behalf of the RUF and Charles Taylor. During that investigation, the contact number of Desadeleer was detected with a call from one of the RUF members he had dealt with, as a result of Sankoh, and did not involve any wrongdoing. The Belgium National Police did not uncover any wrongdoing connected with Desadeleer during their comprehensive investigation, which was shared with the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
However, in 2015 the Belgium National Police, based on information provided by Civitas Maxima, accused Desadeleer of enslavement using victims to mine diamond used to procure weapons for the RUF, all based on witnesses produced by Civitas Maxima, specifically Alain Werner and Hassan Bility. Conflicting testimony started to emerge once witnesses other than those produced by Civitas Maxima took the stand about the legal relationship between the RUF and Desadeleer. Civitas Maxima allegedly portrayed Desadeleer as the architect and mastermind of the illegal diamond mining, using forced and enslaved labor that had existed throughout the civil war. Trying to get a notch in their belt, they tried to make Desadeleer the “White Face” of the conflict and convince the Belgium government that he was a “war criminal”, based on reportedly false information and false statements provided by coached witnesses reportedly produced by Werner and Bility.
Unfortunately, the Belgium government relied on these false assertions and issued an arrest warrant for Desadeleer and submitted it to Interpol, which caused a red notice to be issued. This led to the arrest of Desadeleer while entering Spain in 2015, and he was later extradited to Belgium where he was detained, despite his public pleading of innocence coupled with conflicting testimony of actual witnesses who knew of his legal relationship with the RUF. He committed suicide as a result of despair and humiliation while in custody in 2016.
His death is being viewed as a form of manslaughter, where someone takes the life of another as a result of reckless behavior. Clearly, the use of reportedly false and conflicting information to seek an unlawful arrest and prosecution of person led to the suicide of Desadeleer, arguably the result of the alleged reckless action of Civitas Maxima.
Unfortunately, this has been the modus operandi recently uncovered during the trial of Gibril Massaquoi, including other cases wherein coached witnesses were produced by Civitas Maxima to provide false testimony of war crimes and crimes against humanity seeking a wrongful conviction for personal and financial gain.
Civitas Maxima has received millions of Euros and US dollars since its inception in 2012 from various donors, including the United Nations Voluntary Funds for Victims of Torture in support of this criminal enterprise.
What is still difficult to comprehend is why Bility and Werner would choose to falsely malign people’s character knowing that they did not commit the crime they are accusing them of. Observers are recommending that Civitas Maxima and Global Justice and Research Project (GJRP) be banned from providing witnesses due to the embarrassment they are causing for war crimes investigators, as well as the victims.