US actress Mia Farrow has told a war crimes trial in The Hague that Naomi Campbell named Liberia's Charles Taylor as the man who sent a ‘huge diamond’ to the supermodel's room in 1997.
‘She said that in the night she had been awakened. Some men were knocking at her door. They were sent by Charles Taylor and they had given her a huge diamond,’ Ms Farrow told the Liberian ex-president's trial.
Ms Farrow and Campbell's former agent, Carole White, have been called to testify about a charity dinner hosted by then South African president Nelson Mandela in September 1997, after which two men brought a parcel of diamonds to Campbell's room at a guesthouse.
Giving evidence, Ms White said the model and Mr Taylor were ‘mildly flirting’ during dinner. Campbell said she was seated next to Mr Mandela.
But Ms White said she was in between Mr Taylor and a man she believed to be Liberia's minister for defence.
She said that, at one point, Ms Campbell told her Taylor was going to give her a gift of diamonds.
She said: ‘Naomi was very excited and told me 'He's going to give me some diamonds. She leaned back in her chair to talk to me.’
She said Mr Taylor was leaning forward, ‘smiling and nodding in agreement’. She added: ‘They were being charming to each other, mildly flirting.
‘They were just being affable. Naomi, I think, was flirting with him and he was flirting back.’
She said they were ‘enjoying each other's company’, adding: ‘I just heard them laughing and talking but I can't recall the conversation.’
Ms White said she was Ms Campbell's main agent for 17 years before they split in 2006.
As well as negotiating her modelling deals, she was responsible for organising Ms Campbell's hairdressers, make-up artists and bodyguards.
Prosecutors are trying to link the diamonds to Mr Taylor, 62, to prove allegations that he received diamonds from rebels in Sierra Leone, which they say he then used to buy weapons during the 1997 trip to South Africa. Mr Taylor denies the allegations.
‘Blood diamonds’ are diamonds mined in conflict zones and sold to fund warring parties.
Ms Campbell has called Ms White's claims lies, and said last week she did not know who the diamonds came from, saying she had been woken in the night by two men knocking at her bedroom door who gave her a pouch with a few small ‘dirty looking stones'.
The fashion model said she told Ms White and Ms Farrow about the gift the next day at breakfast and that she gave them to Jeremy Ractliffe, the then-head of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund.
Mr Ractliffe handed them over to South African police on Thursday, shortly after Ms Campbell’s testimony.
