Naomi Campbell and Taylor’s blood diamond

Naomi Campbell, the queen of the catwalk, is also no doubt the queen of controversy. She is in the spotlight over a diamond that was allegedly given to her by a man facing trial at The Hague.

No trouble with the gift, except that it is part of the infamous blood diamonds collection.

The diamonds that the world is ashamed of because they are extracted on the breaking backs of poor Africans who often lose their lives in wars they know little about, like that in the Democratic Republic of Congo or in Sierra Leone.

The diamonds are mined from land owned by communities too poor and engaged in war to enjoy a square meal.

So, former Liberian ruler Charles Taylor, it is alleged, gave Naomi an uncut diamond. And that, investigators believe, could help nail Mr Taylor for the atrocities committed under his watch while the rich and heartless mined the diamonds.

“You don’t forget when a girlfriend tells you she was given a huge diamond in the middle of the night,” said actress Mia Farrow to news channel ABC after allegations of the supermodel’s possession of blood diamonds leaked to the media.

Ms Farrow said she and Naomi were both guests at the Pretoria home of South African statesman Nelson Mandela, during a visit that coincided with a stopover by Mr Taylor.

During an interview with the American news agency, she said Naomi described to her in detail a night visit from two of Mr Taylor’s men.

In that South September night, two men she had never seen knocked at the supermodel’s door. Naomi, half asleep, opened the door and let in the men. They turned out to be Mr Taylor’s representatives.

Since it is unAfrican to make visits with empty hands, the two came bearing a girl’s best friend from the tiny West African nation courtesy of their ruler.

The gift in question was a huge uncut diamond that might prove to be the long sought after link connecting Charles Taylor to the blood diamond trade that allegedly funded years of a bloody reign in his home country.

“We were like, ‘oh my gosh,’” says Ms Farrow. As a result of this late night escapade, prosecutors at The Hague for the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone have ordered her to appear before the court on July 29 to answer on these allegations.

Prosecutors have complained of unsuccessfully trying to contact Ms Campbell several times since June last year, when they first heard of the gift.

They cited public statements in which she said she “does not want to be involved” as evidence of her lack of cooperation. Prosecutors argue the model’s testimony would support their contention that Mr Taylor lied when he said he never possessed rough diamonds.

For the 40-year-old British supermodel, life seems to have gone full circle. As it seems, she seldom has a dull moment in her busy schedule.

She is either strutting the runway, gracing the covers of fashion magazines with what former model Tyra Banks once described as the “best body in the business”, punching camera crews and personal assistants or soaking in the sun in some exclusive villa in Malindi.

These excesses of life seem to be exactly what she sought out to get from her early childhood days in London. She never knew her father who abandoned her mother just two months after her birth, and her mother, Valerie Campbell, is a former ballet dancer of Afro-Jamaican descent.

Even on her birth certificate, her father is unnamed and neither she nor her mother has ever publicly revealed his identity.

As a child, Naomi was left in the care of a maid while her mother travelled across Europe with a dance troupe. At 10, she was accepted into acting school where she studied ballet.

Three years prior to acting school, she starred as one of the school children in Bob Marley’s video to the Is This Love? classic.

At 15, she was spotted by a scout and went on to sign as a full time model for Elite Modelling Agency. She took on the catwalk by storm but soon London was too small a playground for her. She wanted more.

Her big break in the fashion industry came when she turned 18 years. To her advantage, she had one of the biggest names in fashion behind her.

The designer

While working in Europe, she had left French designer Yves St Laurent awestruck by her beauty.

The designer was so convinced that she had what it takes to grace the cover of any major magazine that in 1988, he threatened to cancel all his advertising from an upcoming issue of Vogue Paris, if the magazine editor was not willing to put her on the cover.

The advertising revenue was quite substantial. The magazine would barely break even if Yves pulled out. As a result, an amicable settlement was reached. The editor blinked, the ads ran and Naomi became the first black cover girl for the magazine.

After the 2008 death of the legendary French designer, she eulogised him thus: “My first Vogue cover ever was because of this man.

Because when I said to him ‘Yves, they won’t give me a French Vogue cover, they won’t put a black girl on the cover’ and he was like ‘I’ll take care of that,’ and he did,” she told Vogue magazine.

As a result of the intervention from Yves St Laurent, she went on to grace covers of Vogue UK, Time Magazine, Vogue China as well as a nude photo shoot for Playboy.

Other than magazines, she appeared in music videos for pop star George Michael, Madonna, and Michael Jackson and

rapper Jay-Z. Her star was rising fast. Until the lawsuits started coming.

In 2000, she pleaded guilty in a Toronto court to a 1998 assault on her then assistant. The court heard that she assaulted the assistant with a telephone in a hotel room and then proceeded to threaten to throw her out of a moving Peugeot.

But her record was cleared after she opted for an out-of-court settlement as well as attend anger management classes.

But the classes did little to mellow her. Five years later, she was back in front of yet another judge in Britain, accused of slapping another assistant and hitting her over the head with her mobile phone.

In the same year, an Italian actress who has claimed Naomi left her “covered in blood” after an altercation at a Rome hotel also sued her. The reason?

The Italian had dared wear a similar dress to that of the supermodel to an event. In 2007, she was faced with another assault charge. This time, the victim was another house keeper. Naomi pleaded guilty to reckless assault.

A year later, she was arrested at Heathrow Airport on suspicions of assaulting a police officer after losing part of her luggage. This earned her a ban from all British Airways flights.

And in March this year, her limousine driver said the supermodel slapped and punched him before fleeing the scene on foot.

Closer home, it is her now broken affair with Italian billionaire Flavio Briatore, 20 years her senior, that might stand out. At the height of their romance, the model was contemplating putting up a high-end casino in the holiday town.

Maybe taking cue from the company her then boyfriend kept, the casino was to be christened Billionaires Resort.