SIERRA LEONE: Sorie Sawaneh was forced to tear off his own forearm in front of jeering fighters after their commander's machete blows failed to slice it off cleanly.
Like other amputees in the camps dotted around Sierra Leone's mountainous capital Freetown, he wanted to see justice done when the country's civil war, one of modern Africa's most brutal, finally ended.
Yesterday, 2½ years after the end of the diamond-fuelled conflict, a UN-backed court began trying the masterminds at a war crimes tribunal being trumpeted as the cheapest and most efficient of its kind.
But many of the victims of a decade of mass rape and mutilation, amputees and war wounded who have not yet found their way back into society, say the outcome of the trials will make little difference to their lives.
"The international community comes and looks. It talks and talks and talks, but we have nothing. We say 'Thank You' but we can't even look after ourselves, let alone our dependants," said Sawaneh (65), who once worked as a driver and now lives in a camp just outside Freetown.
Hidden behind wire-topped concrete walls in the centre of town and defended by United Nations troops, Sierra Leone's special court is the first such tribunal to be held in the country where the crimes were committed.
But its limited mandate - to try those bearing the greatest responsibility for atrocities during the war - means that thousands of former fighters who looted, raped and hacked civilians to death will never stand trial.
"As far as I am concerned the most important thing is how I can keep myself and my children alive," said Kadiatu Fofanah (44), a mother of nine, whose legs were chopped off at the hips by rebels after they shot five of her friends.
"The guns have been taken from the children and you don't hear gunshots now, but the commanders are still out there. They continue to survive."
Once the international lawyers, clerks and support staff move on, some question whether the former British colony will have learned much from hosting the war crimes tribunal.
"What brought about the war is still here," said Fatou Sankoh, wife of the notorious rebel leader Foday Sankoh, who was indicted but died in custody last year. "The corruption, the deep poverty, the frustrated youth. It's all still here."