The Hague,
August 26, 2008
This morning at 9.30 a.m. Court went briefly into open session. The accused, Charles Taylor, was present in spite of remarks of Lead Defense Counsel Courtenay Griffiths yesterday, that Taylor would no longer accept the extra measures of maximum security imposed on him by the Dutch authorities and would henceforth not appear in Court. After Presiding Judge Teresa Doherty had taken appearances (Nick Koumjian and Leigh Lawrie for the Prosecution; Courtenay Griffiths and Terry Munyard for the Defense), Court went back in private session to continue the cross-examination of prosecution witness TF1-375 by Defense Counsel Terry Munyard. As soon as Court is back in open session our monitoring will continue.
The Court is going to have to decide whether this trial will be open to the public or not. Since the commencement of the trial after the summer break on August 18th. There have beeen almost all closed sessions. The present Witness examination was done primarily in open session in June. Why is it now the cross examination has been done almost exclusively in closed or private session?