The war-crimes conviction stands, but the court acquits the former Liberian commander of crimes against humanity because Switzerland introduced that offense after his crimes.
Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court has upheld former Liberian rebel commander Alieu Kosiah’s war-crimes conviction and maximum 20-year prison sentence, while acquitting him of crimes against humanity. The acquittal removes an additional conviction imposed on appeal, but does not reduce his punishment.
The judgment was dated 28 September 2026 and published on 30 October, as Al Jazeera said in its report that day. Kosiah’s original conviction rested on war crimes alone; the Federal Criminal Court’s appeals chamber upheld his 20-year sentence and added a crimes-against-humanity conviction in 2023.
In its original 2021 judgment, the Federal Criminal Court imposed the maximum sentence available when the crimes were committed, without a crimes-against-humanity conviction. The surviving war-crimes convictions therefore independently support the punishment.
Switzerland introduced its crimes-against-humanity offense in 2011. The Supreme Court held that it could not apply to earlier conduct, following the principle of non-retroactivity: a later criminal offense cannot be applied backward. Lawmakers had expressly excluded that possibility.
The appeals chamber had relied on customary international law—unwritten international legal rules—to add the conviction. The Supreme Court rejected that route to applying the Swiss offense to Kosiah’s earlier acts.
Kosiah commanded forces in the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy, known as ULIMO. His convictions concern crimes committed in Liberia between 1993 and 1995 during its first civil war, including ordering or participating in the killings of 17 civilians and two unarmed soldiers.
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The convictions also cover rape, use of a child soldier, orders to loot, cruel and humiliating treatment of civilians, and mistreatment of a civilian’s remains.
Kosiah settled in Switzerland in the late 1990s and was arrested there in 2014. Switzerland’s universal-jurisdiction rules allow its courts to prosecute international crimes committed abroad, providing the basis for his trial over events in Liberia.
Civitas Maxima, a Swiss organization that works to bring perpetrators of international crimes to justice, said the decision makes final the first war-crimes conviction by a Swiss civilian court and the first conviction anywhere of a Liberian for war crimes committed during the country’s civil wars.
Its director Alain Werner, a lawyer representing victims in the case, welcomed the surviving conviction as final justice for survivors. He also expressed deep disappointment at the crimes-against-humanity acquittal.
SRF said in its October 30 report that it expects the ruling to exclude pre-2011 conduct from the crimes-against-humanity case against former Gambian interior minister Ousman Sonko and likely reduce his sentence. The broadcaster’s reasoning is that the alleged crimes occurred outside wartime, so war-crimes charges cannot provide an alternative basis. The Federal Criminal Court’s appeals chamber was scheduled to announce its judgment concerning Sonko on 1 December.
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