Los Angeles: The model Naomi Campbell could be summoned to a war crimes tribunal over allegations that she was given a "blood diamond" by Liberia's former president Charles Taylor.
Prosecutors want to subpoena Campbell to testify about claims by the actress Mia Farrow that the model was given the "large" diamond after a 1997 dinner hosted in South Africa by the former president Nelson Mandela.
Taylor denies 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone during the 1990s, which claimed 130,000 lives. He is accused of arming Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front in exchange for rough diamonds — so-called "blood diamonds" used to fund war — from mines seized by the rebels.
Prosecutors said: "Ms Campbell, as the actual recipient of the accused's gift of diamonds, is clearly in a position to provide material evidence about this event... "
