Campbell admits to gift of ‘dirty-looking stones’

Supermodel Naomi Campbell finally took the stand this morning - fashionably late - at the war crimes trial of Charles Taylor and answered the question prosecutors have been waiting months to put to her: Was she given 'blood diamonds' by the former Liberian president?

In answer, she admitted she had been given a pouch containing a few "dirty-looking stones" by two men who knocked on her bedroom door when she was already sleeping following a 1997 dinner for Taylor in South Africa, hosted by Nelson Mandela.

"Two men were there and gave me a pouch and said: 'A gift for you'," she told the court at The Hague.

She put the pouch beside her bed without looking inside - she explained later that she is often given gifts - and went back to sleep.

In the morning she opened the pouch. "I saw a few stones in there, they were very small dirty-looking stones," she said. There was no explanatory note.

At breakfast, she told her agent Carol White and the actress Mia Farrow - who had also been a guest at Mandela's dinner - what had happened.

"One of the two said 'That's obviously Charles Taylor', and I said 'I guess that was'."

The prosecution hopes to establish that Taylor, a warlord before he became president in 1997, took so-called 'blood diamonds' in return for arming the rebels in Sierra Leone's long and bloody civil war.

Campbell said the stones were only in her possession for about six hours before she gave them to Jeremy Ractliffe of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund. She said that when she spoke to him on the telephone last year he confirmed that he still had them.

However, in a letter presented to the court, the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund said it had "never received a diamond or diamonds from Ms Campbell or from anyone else. It would have been improper and illegal to have done so."

Campbell, whose lawyers had won a 'no photographs' ruling before her appearance at The Hague today, showed her famously haughty side when she was criticised by the prosecutor for answering questions before they were finished.

Asked whether she was nervous, she responded: "Obviously I'm just like wanting to get this over with and get on with my life. This is a big inconvenience for me."

She admitted that she had previously denied to the media receiving the diamonds because she feared for her family. Taylor was, she said, "someone I read on the internet has killed thousands of people, supposedly".

'Supposedly' is what the prosecution at The Hague is hoping to translate into 'definitely'. Taylor, whose trial has been continuing on and off since 2007, has pleaded not guilty to 11 charges, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. ·