Naomi Campbell has begun testifying this morning at the war crimes trial of the former Liberian president Charles Taylor.
The supermodel attended the Special Court for Sierra Leone in the Hague in the Netherlands to give evidence relating to a gift she received after a dinner party hosted by Nelson Mandela in South Africa in 1997.
She told the war court that she was given a pouch of "dirty-looking" stones after the party, which was also attended by actress Mia Farrow, her then modelling agent Carole White and Taylor. Campbell explained how she went to bed after the party and was then woken up by two men knocking at her door, who then handed her the pouch of diamonds as a present.
"When I was sleeping I had a knock at my door and I opened my door and two men were there and gave me a pouch and said: ‘a gift for you'," Campbell told the court.
She then said that she left the pouch next to her bed, went back to sleep and opened it in the morning.
She added: "I saw a few stones in there. Very small, dirty-looking stones. There was no explanation, no note."
According to Campbell, she then joined White and Farrow for breakfast and told them about the gift. One of the two suggested that the diamonds must have come from Taylor. Campbell said she agreed and that she then handed the pouch to a colleague.
"Once I handed them over it was out of my hands," she said.
Campbell insists she gave them to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund because she wanted them to go to charity, however the fund said via a letter in court that it had never received them.
Charles Taylor is standing trial for 11 counts of instigating murder, rape, mutilation and turning children into soldiers during the Sierra Leone Civil War, which ran from 1991 to 2002, and in which tens of thousands of people died.
The gems given to Campbell are believed to be so-called "blood diamonds" that were mined during the war and then sold to finance insurgents. Prosecutors believe that Campbell's evidence is crucial to the trial and that they can link the rough, uncut diamonds given to her back to Taylor and prove he sold them to buy weapons for rebel fighters during the conflict, something which he has always denied.
Taylor, 62, was elected president of Liberia in 1997 but was forced to step down in 2003 and went into exile in Nigeria. He was arrested in 2006 and his trial at the Hague began a year later with only a few witnesses left to testify.
Campbell admits that she was reluctant to give evidence in the case and didn't want to appear at the trial because of fears for her safety, but later agreed to attend "to help clarify events in 1997."
The trial continues.
Picture: Naomi Campbell pictured in court today.
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