Naomi Campbell tells court of "dirty pebbles"

A frame grab shows British supermodel Naomi Campbell (L) arriving to testify at the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor at the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone in Leidschendam August 5, 2010.[Photo/Agencies]

A frame grab shows British supermodel Naomi Campbell testifying at the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor at the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone in Leidschendam August 5, 2010.[Photo/Agencies]

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"I went back to bed. I looked into the pouch the next morning," the British model said. "I saw a few stones, they were very small, dirty looking stones."

"I'm used to seeing diamonds shiny and in a box ... If someone had not said they were diamonds, I would not have known they were diamonds," she said.

Prosecutors summoned Campbell to support their allegations that Taylor received so-called blood diamonds from rebels in Sierra Leone and used them to buy weapons during his 1997 trip to South Africa. Taylor denied the allegations as "nonsense."

He is charged with 11 counts of instigating murder, rape, mutilation, sexual slavery and conscription of child soldiers during wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone in which more than 250,000 people were killed. He denies all the charges.

Campbell initially refused to testify and told the judges she feared for her family's safety after reading on the Internet about Taylor's alleged involvement in mass killings.

"NOT ABNORMAL"

Under defense questioning, she stressed she did not know personally whether the stones came from Taylor. She said she had handed them to the manager of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, Jeremy Ratcliffe, on boarding a luxury train the following day and asked him "to do something good with them."