War crime trial opens against Charles Taylor

A BLOOD diamond expert and an account from a Sierra Leonean miner who said laughing rebels hacked off his hands and burned his family opened the war crimes trial against Liberia’s Charles Taylor yesterday.

At the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up to try those behind the 1991-2002 war, the former Liberian president faces charges of rape, murder, mutilation and recruitment of child soldiers.

Mr Taylor is accused of trying to gain control of the mineral wealth of neighbouring Sierra Leone, and of seeking to destabilise its government by supplying the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels.