A Finnish court was to begin hearing witness testimony in Liberia’s capital Monrovia on Tuesday as part of a first-of-a-kind war-crimes trial in the country.

The court is in the country for a case against Gibril Massaquoi, a former senior member of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a Sierra Leone rebel group that also fought in Liberia.

Massaquoi, a Sierra Leonean national, has lived in Finland since 2008, but was arrested there in March last year after a rights NGO investigated his war record.

A case against the 51-year-old then began on February 3 in the northern European country, where he is accused of responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed between 1999 and 2003.

Liberian human rights advocate Adama Dempster has been telling my colleague Adolphus Mawolo more about this trial on the line from Monrovia.