But police had gone to the house of the community leader where Kamara was supposed to be living under strict observation while on bail and found him missing. Kamara's cell phone location showed that he was already fleeing. He had a new phone registered in a woman's name - clear evidence prosecutors said, that he was organizing his escape."I do not deny that. I was afraid. I wanted to escape," the 47-year-old told the Paris Court hearing the case against him.
At the time of his 2018 arrest Kamara was well aware that investigators were closing in on him. His former Ulimo ally Alieu Kosiah had visited him in the Netherlands and called him in Belgium before Kosiah was arrested on war crimes charges in Switzerland in 2016. Kamara had also known Mohamed Jabateh, the Ulimo leader who was convicted of criminal immigration fraud in the United States in 2017.
In truth, said the presiding judge, Kamara knew that Dutch authorities were adding more and more information about his war time activities to his file. That was making it more difficult for him to get work. In another recorded phone call Kamara confessed that he had left the Netherlands because he felt investigators closing in.
Prosecutors spent most of the day attacking Kamara's integrity, even without raising the war crimes of which he is accused. They highlighted the lies he told Dutch authorities when applying for asylum in the Netherlands. He had told them, untruthfully, that he was living in a refugee camp in Guinea when in fact he lived with a relative. He had denied any role in Ulimo knowing that would have ended any chance of asylum.
Kamara appeared to sense that the day had gone badly. He was impassioned in his delivery, holding onto the panes of the window that separated him from his lawyers and reaching his hands out beyond the glass box that held him.