In Sierra Leone, the pastor found a huge diamond
Christian pastor dug in the Kono district in the East of Sierra Leone, one of the world’s largest diamonds.
Gemstone weight 709 carats, was found by Emmanuel Momocha, is now kept at the Central Bank of Sierra Leone in the capital Freetown.
This gem is one of the twenty largest diamonds known to mankind.
The pastor managed to get the largest diamond in Sierra Leone over the past 45 years. Before that, in 1972, there was found a diamond weighing 969 carats, named “Star of Sierra Leone”.
Diamond found by the pastor, Wednesday evening drove the country’s President Ernest Bai Koroma. The President “thanked the local leader and his people for what they have not taken the diamond out of the country,” according to the presidential administration.
The President also said that the owners of the mine should receive “what they want”, and the discovery must “benefit the country as a whole.”
Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world, yet it is rich in diamonds, gemstones was one of the sources of financing the civil war in Sierra Leone.
In 2012, the UN international criminal Tribunal for Sierra Leone has sentenced former Liberian President Charles Taylor to 50 years in prison: a court in the Hague found him guilty of supporting rebels from the Revolutionary United front in Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war.
In gratitude for their support, according to the prosecution, the rebels were transported to Taylor and his entourage diamonds, which, because of their origin press called “bloody”.