Assistant United States Attorney Linwood C. Wright, Jr. and Assistant United States Attorney Nelson S.T. Thayer prosecuted Jabbateh. Thayer was previously a trial attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and prosecuted the massacre in Srebrenica, Bosnia. The government stated that as a ULIMO-K commander in the late 1990s, Jabbateh either committed himself or ordered his troops to "commit crimes such as the murder of civilians, sexual enslavement of women, public rapes, conscription of child soldiers and maiming and torture of noncombatants." Twenty witnesses and victims were flown from Liberia to Philadelphia to testify in court against Jabbateh.