Campbell was being questioned in Taylor's war crimes
trial about claims made by actress Mia Farrow that Taylor gave the model an
uncut diamond or diamonds after a dinner party hosted by Nelson Mandela that
they all attended in South Africa in 1997.
Prosecutors say, if true, the story would provide
evidence that Taylor traded guns to neighboring Sierra Leone rebels in exchange
for uncut diamonds - sometimes known as "blood diamonds" during that
country's 1992-2002 civil war.
The British model said on the stand Thursday she was
awakened in the middle of the night after the September 1997 dinner party by
two black men at her door. She said they offered her a pouch they said was a
gift for her with no further explanation.
She said she frequently receives gifts from admirers and
didn't look at it until the following morning.
"I saw a few stones in there. And they were small
dirty-looking stones," she said.
She said, at breakfast the following day, either Farrow
or Campbell's former agent Carole White had told her the rocks must be diamonds
and were probably a gift from Taylor. Campbell said she then gave them to a
friend, Jeremy Ratcliffe, who at the time was the director of Mandela's
children's charity.
The supermodel, who had fought hard to avoid testifying,
arrived at the courthouse in Leidschendam surrounded by a police escort. In
contrast to her usual edgy fashion style, she wore a demure cream two-piece
outfit and her hair was piled up into a classic chignon.
Entering the courtroom fashionably late - several minutes
after she was first summoned to take the stand - Campbell was calm and composed
as she quickly answered questions from prosecutor Brenda Hollis.
"I didn't really want to be here," she said.
"I just want to get this over with and get on with my life."
Prosecutors say from his seat of power in Liberia, Taylor
armed, trained and commanded Sierra Leone rebels who murdered and mutilated
thousands of civilians across the border. Taylor says he is innocent of the 11
war crimes charges he faces, including murder, rape, sexual enslavement and
recruiting child soldiers.
Defense attorney Courtenay Griffiths got Campbell to
testify that alternate versions of the event given to prosecutors by Farrow and
White were wrong. He said White has suggested Campbell was seated next to
Taylor at the dinner and flirted with him.
White is enmeshed in a legal dispute with Campbell.
"This is a woman who has a power motive to lie about
you?" Courtenay asked.
"Correct," Campbell answered, with a slight
smile. She said she sat between Mandela, who she idolized, and music producer
Quincy Jones.
Campbell had declined to cooperate with prosecutors until
judges last month ordered her to appear or face a maximum sentence of seven
years for contempt.
Hollis, the prosecutor, asked why Campbell had been so
reluctant to appear before the war crimes tribunal.
"This is someone that I read up on the Internet that
killed thousands of people supposedly and I don't want my family in any danger
in any way," Campbell said.
Griffiths angrily objected that was "totally
irrelevant" to her testimony.
The hot-tempered Campbell, 40, is no stranger to
courtrooms, having faced a series of minor lawsuits and criminal cases over the
years.
In June 2008 she pleaded guilty in an incident where she
cursed, kicked and spat at police at London's Heathrow airport in a rage over a
missing piece of luggage. She was sentenced to 200 hours of community service
for that.
Campbell also did a week of community service sweeping
floors and scrubbing toilets in a Manhattan garbage-truck garage in 2007 after
pleading guilty to misdemeanor assault for hurling a cell phone at her maid
because of a vanished pair of jeans.
In 2000, Campbell pleaded guilty in Toronto to an assault
charge for beating an assistant who said the model whacked her on the head with
a phone.
A few of Campbell's former aides and maids have sued her,
accusing her of violent outbursts; some cases have been settled on undisclosed
terms.
Campbell became one of the world's highest-paid models
after being discovered while shopping in London at age 15.
