'Naomi received six blood diamonds'

Naomi Campbell prefers not to talk about her meeting with former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. Which, given his current situation, is hardly surprising. On trial at an international war crimes court in The Hague, the 62-year-old Taylor is not the kind of man whose number any self-respecting supermodel would want to keep in her little black book.

The former warlord is accused of fuelling a bloody civil war in Sierra Leone as well as rape, murder and conscripting child soldiers.

It is hard to imagine a less likely figure to be consorting with the Streatham-born supermodel. Yet when their paths crossed at a social function in South Africa in 1997, the former Liberian dictator is said to have been so smitten with Campbell that he gave her a large diamond as a token of his affection.

And if the tale is true, say prosecutors at the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, it could help secure a conviction against a man who, according to one witness, ordered human sacrifices to celebrate his rise to power in Liberia and encouraged cannibalism among his soldiers to terrify his enemies.

Taylor denies ever possessing such gems, and all the charges against him. Campbell's testimony, then, is vital to the case against him. And this week, after repeatedly refusing to be formally interviewed about the incident, she was ordered by court officials to appear before the Special Court on July 29 to testify or "show good cause why" she cannot.

Campbell, who is dating Russian billionaire property mogul Vladimir Doronin, says she fears for the safety of her family if she gets involved. Most intriguingly of all, the 40-year-old supermodel has denied the diamond story outright.

"I didn't receive a diamond and I'm not going to speak about that, thank you," she told ABC news in April.

Unfortunately for Campbell, however, fellow guests with her that memorable night in September 1997 when the supermodel and the dictator met give a conflicting version of events and tell a far more disturbing story.

Charity

One who spoke to the Mail, Campbell's former agent Carole White, said: "There were six small diamonds. They weren't cut. They were in a bit of paper. I saw them. I had them in my hand."

The supermodel's trip to South Africa in the early autumn was, without doubt, motivated only by her desire to help Nelson Mandela's Children's Fund, a charity he set up in 1994 not long after becoming President of a newly-democratic South Africa.

Mandela had personally invited her to attend the celebrity-studded inauguration journey of The Blue Train, South Africa's answer to the Orient Express.

"Naomi did a lot of charity work for Nelson Mandela," says Carole White, owner of Premier Model Management in London, who accompanied Campbell on the trip. "His charity was connected to the promotion so it was just a thing she did. It was a good thing for her to do."

During the 27-hour, 1,000-mile journey from Pretoria to Cape Town, travelling through some of the most spectacular scenery in Africa, Campbell dined on zebra and rubbed shoulders with other high profile guests such as actress Mia Farrow, cricketer Imran Khan and his then wife Jemima, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Michael Jackson's producer Quincy Jones as well as Mandela and his future wife Graca Machel.

And when the guests arrived in Cape Town the following day, they dined at Mandela's home, a sprawling 18th-century mansion on the Groote Schuur estate which once belonged to Sir Cecil Rhodes.

Concern

It was here that Campbell met Taylor for the first time. At dinner, Campbell found herself seated next to the tyrant and, according to White, a woman once affectionately described by Campbell as her "surrogate mother", it wasn't long before the subject of diamonds came up.

"It came up over dinner," White says. "I was there. I heard it. Charles Taylor was there and Naomi was seated next to him and then there was the Minister of Defence from his country and I was seated next to him. Mia Farrow was opposite."

Asked why she thinks Taylor wanted to discuss giving diamonds to Campbell, she gives a one word answer: "flirting".

But it was White who was to be in charge of the logistics. She adds: "I was dealing with everything how was she going to get them, because Taylor didn't have them in his possession? I was asked by Charles Taylor and Naomi and his Minister of Defence to organise letting his people, who were going to bring the diamonds from Johannesburg to Cape Town. The diamonds came that night. Everyone was asleep."

White has already given a statement about the events of that night to the Special Court in The Hague via her lawyer in London.

White has also been told that she is one of three new witnesses who will be summoned to give evidence in July or August. Campbell is another. The third is Mia Farrow.

Her recollection of the events of that night are what sparked the entire "blood diamond" scandal. Last June, when she became aware of the nature of Charles Taylor's trial, she contacted the court to tell them she had vital evidence.

Farrow claims that Campbell blurted out the "unforgettable story" about the diamonds over breakfast the morning after their dinner at Mandela's home.

"You don't forget when a girlfriend tells you that she was given a huge diamond in the middle of the night," she told American news channel ABC.

"She said that during the night some men had knocked on her door, and she, half asleep, had opened it, and they were representatives of Charles Taylor and they had given her a huge diamond. There's no doubt in my mind.

"She said she was going to give it to President Mandela's children's charity and I thought no more about it."

White insists that Campbell who she believed was given all six of the gems — did, indeed, give the diamonds to Mandela's charity.

She adds: "Otherwise I would have been carrying them illegally out of South Africa.

"Even though we didn't know the origin of Taylor's diamonds we knew that anyone found in possession of any diamond by customs authorities is expected to produce certification from where it has been obtained — and I didn't have that so I wasn't prepared to do it.

"It would have been a really bad thing to do.'

White adds that they were only in Campbell's possession for "probably a day". Asked if she knows who the diamonds were handed to, she says: "Yes I do, but I'm not going to say."

Accusations

According to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund no diamonds have ever been received from Campbell.

Certainly, it is fair to say that the charity would have been a highly inappropriate destination for Taylor's "blood diamonds". They may well have been dug up by the child slaves working in Sierra Leone's diamond mines in the 1990s.

Given these accusations, one can imagine why Campbell might wish to keep her involvement with Taylor private.

There is a possibility, of course, if White's recollection is right, that Campbell is not just seeking to protect her own reputation by refusing to speak about her meeting, but is also afraid that giving evidence in court will somehow reflect negatively upon Mandela's charity.

In the past, she has often spoken about her admiration for Mandela, a man she likes to describe as her "adopted grandfather". White says: "I've no idea why she wouldn't talk about it because, eventually, what she did with the diamonds was a good thing. She didn't take them out of the country."

And yet Campbell looked unquestionably furious when asked about the "blood diamond" allegations by US channel ABC news in April. After denying ever receiving a single diamond, she deftly side-stepped a question about dining with Taylor: "I had dinner with Nelson Mandela, thank you very much."

When she appeared on Oprah Winfrey's show in the US last month, Campbell gave a more civilised, if brief, explanation for her silence.

"I don't want to be involved in this man's case," she said. "He has done some terrible things and I don't want to put my family in danger."

But prosecutors at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which is being held at The Hague, claim that Campbell's evidence would show that the former president "used rough diamonds for personal enrichment and arms purposes".

How Campbell responds to this week's subpoena remains to be seen.

According to court spokesman Peter Anderson: "The expectation is that anyone who receives a subpoena will go to court. That's been the case with everyone who has been subpoenaed by the court in the past."

The wording of the subpoena states that the court "respectfully requests the authorities of the state in which Campbell is residing to assist in the enforcement of this order".

But Campbell currently spends much of her time living with her Russian lover in Moscow from where she may well be untouchable.

The supermodel has not indicated that she will refuse to submit to a subpoena issued by a war crimes trial but doing so could do much to damage Campbell's public image, which is already fragile.

The question that everyone will be asking themselves is why she won't talk about her brief encounter with Taylor, even if only to deny or to clarify the stories that are being told by those who were with her that memorable night.