Charles Taylor in the dock for war crimes

Infamous warlord, accused blood diamond merchant and former Liberian President Charles Taylor will be in the dock today before a war crimes tribunal bent on sending a powerful message to the world’s despots that no one is above the law.

Security is tight at the Special Court in Sierra Leone, the country to which Taylor is accused of exporting his own civil war. Court officials who have received death threats and the first former African president to be charged with crimes against humanity will be protected by bullet-proof glass and dozens of UN peacekeepers from Mongolia and Ireland.

Taylor, who has repeatedly declared he is innocent, will be asked to plead to 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including sexual slavery and mutilation. Taylor is to be judged by a UN-backed tribunal established to try those seen as bearing greatest responsibility for atrocities during Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war.

Late yesterday, Taylor’s family said the tribunal was foisting court lawyers on him and refusing him access to his Liberian and Ghanaian layers. Louise Edna Taylor-Carter, Taylor’s eldest sister, also told The Associated Press that the court was refusing to allow relatives to watch Taylor’s indictment on charges of crimes against humanity.

Taylor had earlier asked his spiritual adviser, Indian evangelist Kilari Anand Paul, to contact lawyers in the US and Britain, saying: “bring two attorneys. Bring them any way you can. I need somebody to take charge of this defence immediately ... (I need) to put things into motion because we have only 30 days to answer the indictment.”

Paul had included an Associated Press reporter in the conference call with Taylor, who spoke from his cell at the tribunal, but the reporter was not allowed to ask questions for fear prison authorities would disconnect the call. Paul later said that Taylor had asked him to contact a top law professor at Harvard University, in Boston, and a senior Queen’s Council lawyer in Britain.

Taylor’s sister, Thelma, called The Associated Press from Monrovia, Liberia, to complain that court officials at the detention centre had refused to allow the group of Taylor’s Liberian relatives and lawyers to see him Sunday night.

It’s believed that the detainees are not allowed phone calls or visits after 9 p.m.

Liberian lawyers who say they will represent Taylor said they would argue for the case to be dismissed. The team’s leader, Francis Garlawulo, said Taylor was president when he was indicted, and argued the UN-backed Sierra Leone Special Court had no jurisdiction over Liberia or its head of state and so had no right to try Taylor.

The court’s appeals chamber had rejected a similar argument made soon after the indictment was filed by a Sierra Leonean lawyer representing Taylor.

Garlawulo, who spoke in an interview as he prepared to fly to Freetown, Sierra Leone’s seaside capital, also questioned whether Taylor could receive a fair trial given intense publicity surrounding the case, saying in recent days images of Sierra Leoneans maimed by rebel fighters have dominated television screens around the world.

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 he used to fund his ambitions in Liberia.