Today, Naomi Campbell finally had to testify in open court at Charles Taylor’s war crimes tribunal at The Hague. Previously, Naomi Campbell had tried to get out of testifying, telling Oprah that she feared for her safety, and throwing a hissy fit when an ABC News team dared to ask her about potentially being a witness to Taylor’s possession of Liberian blood diamonds. It’s funny to think about this now, but this whole thing started because Mia Farrow “outed” Naomi as receiving blood diamonds in 1997 – Farrow even claimed that Naomi had “bragged” about receiving uncut diamonds from Charles Taylor when they were both at a dinner for Nelson Mandela. Naomi’s latest diva fit was to demand special concessions for her testimony at the tribunal – she didn’t want to be photographed entering or leaving the court, a right she was given, although oddly enough, her actual testimony was recorded live on a 30-minute delay:
Throughout her testimony, Naomi admits several pieces of information that she had heretofore out-right denied or flat-out lied about. On that night in 1997, Naomi says that she had been sleeping when “two men” knocked on her door and “and gave me a pouch and said: ‘A gift for you.’…I opened the pouch the next morning when I woke up… I saw a few stones in there, they were very small dirty-looking stones… The next morning at breakfast I told Ms [Mia] Farrow and [her former agent Carol White] what had happened and one of the two said ‘That’s obviously Charles Taylor’, and I said ‘I guess that was’.”
Naomi denied that at the dinner for Mandela, she was seated next to Charles Taylor. Naomi claims that she was seated next to Mandela and Quincy Jones. This contradicts earlier testimony from Naomi’s ex-manager Carole White, who claimed that Naomi and Taylor were seated next to each other at the dinner, and that “Miss Campbell and Mr Taylor were mildly flirtatious with each other throughout the dinner.” Allegedly, Charles Taylor also told Naomi that he was going to send her some diamonds, and he made arrangements to send some men with the gift. Naomi denied this conversation happened as well.
Naomi then goes on to claim that she gave away the uncut diamonds! She says she gave them to Jeremy Ratcliffe, who ran the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. Unfortunately for Naomi, Charles Taylor’s defense produced a letter from the Fund in which they claimed they had “never received a diamond or diamonds from Ms Campbell or from anyone else. It would have been improper and illegal to have done so.”
Also: when asked if she was nervous, Naomi replied: “No, well, I didn’t really want to be here. I was made to be here. So, obviously I’m just like wanting to get this over with and get on with my life. This is a big inconvenience for me.” She also said she was afraid of Charles Taylor because he was “someone I read on the internet has killed thousands of people, supposedly“.
So, what’s your verdict? I think Naomi is still lying her ass off about everything, and I love that the prosecution and even Taylor’s defense has her lies all laid out with contradictory testimony. Here’s what I think happened: Naomi and Taylor were sitting next to each other at least part of the dinner, and they struck up a conversation, and surprisingly, Naomi didn’t start beating him with a phone or a fork or anything. Instead, she smells money and so she was nice. Taylor was happy that a beautiful woman was being nice to him, so he devised a plan to give her a present – some lovely uncut diamonds that thousands of people had to die for. He sent his men to her room, Naomi took the diamonds and the next morning, she bragged about her gift to anyone who would listen. She kept them too – my guess is that she probably had them made into some piece of jewelry that she still has. Just my take. Oh, and Naomi is such a major C-U-Next-Tuesday for those quotes, “This is a big inconvenience for me” and “someone I read on the internet has killed thousands of people, supposedly.” This is a war crimes tribunal, not your hair dresser being late at a Marc Jacobs show.
Header: Naomi on June 28, 2010. Credit: Bauer-Griffin.
