Guus Kouwenhoven, 74, was convicted by the Dutch appeal court of being an accessory to war crimes and arms trafficking for selling weapons to Liberia’s then president Charles Taylor during civil wars that involved mass atrocities, the use of child soldiers and sexual slavery. An international timber trader who used his business as cover for smuggling weapons into West Africa in defiance of a UN arms embargo has been sentenced to 19 years in prison. The businessman, known in Liberia as "Mister Gus," ran two timber companies in Liberia between 2000 and 2003 and used them to smuggle weapons into the country, judges at the Den Bosch appeals court found. “These weapons were used by Taylor in an armed conflict with rebels, in which over a period of many years countless civilians were victimised,” the Dutch judges said in a written summary of their ruling. Kouwenhoven “has right up to the present day denied the facts and not given any clarity about his motives”, they added. Judges said they hoped that his case would serve as an example to others that do business with government's like Taylor's "that they can thereby become involved in serious war crimes". The Oriental Timber Company gained trading concessions from Taylor when he was president of Liberia at a time when conflict between rival militias spilled over into neighbouring Sierra Leone, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The case against Kouwenhoven, who was born in Rotterdam, has been fought for years through the Dutch courts, reaching the supreme court before eventually being sent back to the appeal court for a retrial.
Dutch businessman Guus Kouwenhoven is found guilty of war crimes and arms trafficking for using his lumber business to sell weapons to Liberia's former president Charles Taylor during the country's civil war between 2000 and 2003 and is sentenced to 19 years in prison.