Naomi Campbell’s friend testifies he kept ex-president Charles Taylor’s gifted blood diamond in safe

Posted by mija on Aug 6, 2010 in News | 0 comments

The bag of blood diamonds prosecutors say Naomi Campbell got from ousted Liberian president Charles Taylor have turned up – in the safe of her friend.
Jeremy Ractliffe, who used to run Nelson Mandela’s charity, turned over the hot rocks to cops yesterday, a day after Campbell testified at Taylor’s war crimes trial.
Now Ractliffe is under investigation because possession of uncut diamonds is a crime in South Africa, and he’s allegedly had them since 1997
In a statement, Ractliffe told cops Mandela had no idea he was holding the stones.
Taylor is accused of supporting the blood thirsty rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone’s 11-year civil war – and instigating a wave of rapes and amputations – in exchange for diamonds and other natural resources.
A lay Baptist minister who once prostrated himself on the stage during a Pat Robertson-backed revival meeting, Taylor denies trading in the so-called “blood diamonds.”
The sulky supermodel has testified that she met Taylor at a 1997 reception in South Africa and was later given a bag of “dirty looking pebbles.”
Campbell said she did not know they were blood diamonds – or that they were from Taylor. She said she turned them over to Ractliffe after he warned her that taking them out of the country was a crime.
“Naomi suggested they could be of some benefit” to Mandela’s charity, Ractliffe said. “But I told her I would not involve the NMCF in anything that could possibly be illegal. In the end, I decided I should just keep them.”
Read more: nydailynews.com