ROUGH JUSTICE IN AFRICA

Beware bitchy women too

The Australian war crimes investigator Peter Halloran is preparing to leave Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, a changed man. The senior Victorian police officer, cleared this week by the country's Court of Appeal of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl last year, said he had been brutalised - along with the girl and her family - partly because of racial and political agendas in one of the world's most corrupt societies.

Now, he says, it is time to tell his side of the story, and to call his accusers to account. "I am very conscious that anger and bitterness do not get you anywhere," he said, "and I will try not to fall into that trap, although there will be plenty of challenges ahead in that regard, I am sure."

The legal fight to salvage his career and reputation has been expensive. His friends have noticed a deterioration in his appearance. But his health, he said yesterday, was good, apart from the psychological stress of an ordeal that started in June last year when UN colleagues outlined the allegations against him.

Since then he has spent time in one of Africa's worst prisons, and he has endured the humiliation of being accused of one of the worst crimes he could imagine: child sex abuse. "Mud sticks to a degree, depending on the people," he said. With his UN passport, Mr Halloran said he could have left Sierra Leone with ease well before now. "But there was never any question of doing that. I had to clear my name here. I had to fight this to the bitter end and when I get back to Australia, I will have do that some more."

Mr Halloran, 57, was charged in August last year with sex offences and jailed for nearly a month before he was freed on bail. The court later acquitted him of two charges, but in February found him guilty of a third charge of indecent assault, sentencing him to 18 months' imprisonment in the notorious Pademba Road jail. This week the appeal court returned a 2-1 verdict that the original conviction should be set aside. The court found Mr Halloran had been the victim of "a miscarriage of justice" when he was originally convicted.

Mr Halloran was investigations commander with a UN-sponsored war crimes tribunal when the scandal broke. He was sharing a house with investigators Mandy Cordwell, Canadian Mountie Ralph LaPierre, and another Victoria Police officer, Sharon Holt. It was Ms Cordwell, 37, who claimed she had seen the girl - the sister of a local employee who was being interviewed by Mr Halloran for a job as a nanny - in Mr Halloran's bedroom. Mr Halloran was not in the house at the time but Ms Cordwell claimed that the girl told her Mr Halloran had been having sex with her. Mr Halloran was charged, first on four counts relating to sex with a minor, later reduced to three, after a statement by the schoolgirl. The girl then recanted her statement, saying the sex never happened and that she had been pressured to make the claims.

Ms Cordwell, who was later criticised by a Special Court for allegedly putting words into the girl's mouth, does not resile from her claims, friends say. She remained at work, but was later suspended without pay for allegedly talking to the media and making unfounded allegations about other senior members of the Special Court. She later resigned and returned to Australia. "I am not bitter about what she has done," Mr Halloran said. . "But I am very disappointed."

He is still trying to come to terms with the decision to prosecute. "[The prosecution] knew they didn't have a case, yet they pursued it," he said. He thinks the fact that he headed a unit pursuing war criminals associated with the Government and others in power had a lot to do with the decision to pursue him.


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