Taylor: Witnesses were threatened and paid to testify

Former Liberian president Charles Taylor yesterday said witnesses had been threatened and paid to testify against him in a trial that found him guilty of crimes against humanity.

Taylor — the first head of state to be found guilty by an international tribunal since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg — described the international court system as a tool of the West.

Taylor told the war crimes court in The Hague that Washington had used the case to achieve regime change rather than justice.