Former Liberian president tried for war crimes

FORMER Liberian President Charles Taylor appeared before an international war crimes court yesterday.

The former warlord pleaded not guilty to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including sexual slavery, mutilation and sending children into combat in connection with alleged backing of Sierra Leonean rebels.

Many hope the trial of Taylor, the first former African president to face such charges, will firmly establish the principle that Africa’s despots are not above the law.

Security was tight at the Special Court in Sierra Leone, the country to which Taylor is accused of exporting his own civil war.

Taylor, and court officials who received death threats, will be protected by bullet-proof glass and by dozens of UN peacekeepers from Ireland and Mongolia.

Taylor is to be judged by the international tribunal established to try those seen as bearing greatest responsibility for atrocities during Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war.

A Liberian lawyer had said the defence strategy would be to argue that the Sierra Leone court had no jurisdiction over Liberia or its head of state and so had no right to try Taylor, who was president when he was indicted in 2003.

The court’s appeals chamber had rejected a similar argument made soon after the indictment was filed.

Taylor is making his initial appearance in Sierra Leone, but court officials have requested that an international court in The Hague, Netherlands, host the trial, which would remain under Special Court auspices.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has expressed fear that Taylor’s supporters could use a trial held in the region as an excuse to mount another insurgency in her country.

Taylor won a disputed election in Liberia in 1997. Many former allies in an insurgency he had launched in 1989 took up arms against him in 2000 and attacked Monrovia in 2003.

Taylor is accused of backing Sierra Leonean rebels notorious for maiming civilians by chopping off their arms, legs, ears and lips. In return for supporting them, he allegedly got a share of Sierra Leone’s diamond wealth and used it to fund his ambitions in Liberia.

Taylor disappeared last week days after Nigeria reluctantly agreed to hand him over from the exile he had been offered under a peace agreement ending Liberia’s 14-year civil war.

He was captured within a day by Nigerian police and later protested that Nigerian security forces had encouraged him to flee.