AMSTERDAM, March 10 (Reuters) - An appeals court acquitted a Dutch businessman allied to former Liberian President Charles Taylor on Monday, overturning a guilty verdict for arms smuggling in Liberia.
Guus Kouwenhoven was sentenced in 2006 to eight years in jail by a Dutch court for smuggling arms to Taylor's government between 2001 and 2003 in contravention of U.N. sanctions but acquitted of war crimes for lack of evidence. Kouwenhoven had denied the charges.
The appeals court in The Hague said in a statement it was not convinced of the trustworthiness of the testimony of witnesses who linked Kouwenhoven to arms dealing and war crimes and said there was not enough other evidence to convict him.
The court criticised the way prosecutors had conducted their investigation, saying they had not sufficiently checked witness testimony even when the defence had shown numerous contradictions and mistakes.
"The court has so many doubts about the evidence presented by the prosecution that it believes that a conviction would have been founded on shifting sands," it said.
The charges stemmed from Liberia's civil war that started in 1989, spilled across borders, killed a quarter of a million people and spawned a generation of child soldiers.
Known as "Big Gus" in Liberia, the former executive of the Oriental Timber Corp. and the Royal Timber Co. was accused of selling arms in exchange for timber concessions in Liberia, dubbed the "blood timber" trade by campaigners.
Prosecutors had demanded a 20-year prison sentence and a 450,000 euro ($693,000) fine because of the profits they said Kouwenhoven made from illegal arms sales.
Taylor, himself on trial in The Hague on war crimes charges relating to the 1991-2002 conflict in Sierra Leone, gave evidence last month in the Kouwenhoven case in a closed session.
Taylor went on trial in January on charges of orchestrating atrocities in neighbouring Sierra Leone, a conflict intertwined with the war in Liberia. The U.N. court is holding his trial in The Hague over fears it could stoke unrest in west Africa. (Reporting by Emma Thomasson; editing by Keith Weir)
