Naomi Campbell Defends Her Blood Diamond Testimony

Aug 13, 2010

So did Naomi Campbell know that the "dirty-looking stones" she received after a middle of the night knock on her bedroom door were from ex-Liberian president and warlord Charles Taylor, or didn’t she? 

That’s the mystery in front of attorneys now, after actress Mia Farrow took to the stand following Campbell’s testimony last week. ABC News reports that Farrow contradicted the British supermodel’s account of what happened thirteen years ago at a dinner party held at Nelson Mandela’s home. Carole White, Campbell’s ex-agent who is also suing the supermodel for breach of contract, sided with Farrow and said that Campbell did indeed know that it was Taylor who gave her the diamonds.

While on the stand, Campbell, polished and cool in a gigantic beehive hairdo and a creamy yellow cardigan and dress, bristled at prosecutors’ suggestions that she might know more than she was letting on. However, she also claimed she had no idea what a blood diamond was, and did not know who Charles Taylor was even though they socialized together at an intimate dinner party that night in September 1997. She also said she had no idea that Liberia was a country. Lying in the special court for Sierra Leone is a crime punishable by up to two years in prison, but it’s unlikely anything so serious will happen to Campbell, or Farrow.

The AP reports Campbell issued a statement Tuesday: "I’ve no motive here. Nothing to gain. I am a black woman who has and will always support good causes especially relating to Africa. I’ve never taken any of the jobs offered to me, over my 25 years as a model, from companies that were for apartheid in South Africa."

The former Liberian president has been charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for leading Sierra Leone’s bloody civil war in the late 1990s.