British supermodel Naomi Campbell has told a war crimes court that she had received 'dirty-looking stones' as a gift while in South Africa in 1997 but she did not know who they were from.
Ms Campbell was testifying at the Special Court for Sierra Leone where prosecutors say former Liberian president Charles Taylor gave her so-called blood diamonds.
Watch the testimony
The model told the court there was a knock on her door when she was sleeping after a celebrity dinner hosted by then South African president Nelson Mandela in 1997.
She said she opened the door and two men gave her a pouch, saying: 'A gift for you'.
Ms Campbell told the court she left the pouch next to her bed, went back to bed and opened it the next morning.
'I saw a few stones in there. Very small, dirty-looking stones,' she said, adding 'there was no explanation, no note'.
She told judges she 'would not have guessed right away' that the contents of the pouch were diamonds.
'I am used to seeing diamonds shiny and in a box, you know.'
At breakfast that morning, Ms Campbell said she told her then modelling agent Carole White and actress Mia Farrow about the gift.
She said one of the two said that it was obviously from Charles Taylor, and Ms Campbell replied: 'Yes, I guess it was'.'
Ms Campbell said she gave the stones to a friend, an official of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, 'to do something with'.
'I didn't want to keep them,' she said.
She added she never saw Charles Taylor again and never confronted him about the gift, which she said she had not found strange.
'I get gifts given to me all the time, at all hours of the night,' she told the court, adding that 'it is quite normal for me to receive gifts.'
Her evidence ended today with the prosecution denying she was their witness, but the judge pointed out that the prosecution called her.
Ms White and Ms Farrow are to testify about the gift next Monday.
War crimes trial
Charles Taylor's trial opened in The Hague in June 2007 on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the 1991-2001 Sierra Leone civil war.
Tens of thousands of people were killed and mutilated during the 11-year war.
The former president has denied accusations that he supported Sierra Leone's rebels in exchange for diamonds and other natural resources.
He is accused of receiving illegally mined diamonds in return for arming rebels who murdered, raped and maimed Sierra Leone civilians, cutting off their limbs and carving initials into their bodies.
Mr Taylor allegedly took the diamonds to South Africa 'to sell ... or exchange them for weapons'.
Accused of seeking to 'take political and physical control of Sierra Leone in order to exploit its abundant natural resources ... diamonds', Mr Taylor has denied the claims.
He denies all the charges.
Prosecutors called Ms Campbell, 40, to the stand in a bid to disprove the former Liberian president's claim that he never possessed rough diamonds.
They say that Mr Taylor, 62, had men deliver at least one so-called blood diamond to Ms Campbell's room after the two met at a celebrity dinner hosted by Nelson Mandela.
The model is an unwilling participant in this case.
She won a court ruling banning photos of her entering or exiting the court over security concerns.
