«I have a question that I would like you all to think about: will there be a time when a multinational corporation is criminally responsible? We were that close. But we could not connect the dots. We would have liked to but it did not happen.» On 8 April at Harvard University, David Crane spent over an hour and a half talking to American students. Just before taking his leave, David Crane stared at the students fixedly and asked them to reflect on the question. The chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone had just admitted that he has failed to achieve the task that he has always seen as essential: to prosecute businessmen for their role in crimes against humanity committed during the civil war in this small West-African country. Crane looked tense, his eyes scanning the rows of students. There is something rather direct about this man that allows him such kind of forthright and unambiguous admissions.

Crane showed his thirst for the task in an earlier interview on 7 March 2003: «I will look at politicians in the sub-region and I will look at businessmen. Without them, none of this would have happened,» he commented, despite Sierra Leoneans being irritated by the way that he repeatedly reduced the civil war to a battle over a commodity, diamonds. Over the last year and a half, everyone expected the Court to include in its remit prosecution cases linked to business networks. It now looks like this innovative and promising initiative is in trouble. David Crane appears to have handed over the baton to his colleague Luis Moreno Ocampo at the International Criminal Court, who has announced its intention to «follow the money trail» in his investigations in Congo.

Wearing a Sierra Leonean flag on his lapel, the prosecutor of the Freetown tribunal was not expressing only one frustration. He admitted to the Harvard audience that he was incensed with the authorities in his own country - the United States - and in particular over its treatment of Charles Taylor. In June 2003, David Crane publicly indicted the President of Liberia, to the great displeasure of those involved the peace talks, including the Americans. Since August 2003, Taylor has been living in safe exile in Nigeria, with Washington's blessing, according to Crane. «It's a tragedy,» he railed. «I can't believe that the US is covering a war crimes criminal, and they very much are.» David Crane does not hide the fact that he has friends in Congress. But he has very few in the government.