The former Liberian President was on Thursday April 26 convicted of assisting Sierra Leonean rebels.
The former Liberian President, Charles Taylor was yesterday April 26, 2012 convicted by a special war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone in The Hague, Holland for helping rebels who committed atrocities in that country’s civil war in the nineties. Channel 4 Television said the verdict came after more than 100 witnesses and 50,000 pages of transcripts were tendered in court.
A jury of international judges found Taylor, 64, guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes during the Sierra Leone civil war that lasted from 1991 to 2002 in a trial that lasted almost five years. The trial was held in far away Holland instead of Sierra Leone where the crimes were committed, for security reasons.
The Special Court for Sierra Leone had accused him of backing rebels who killed and maimed tens of thousands of people during the civil war. His support for the Revolutionary United Front, RUF rebels was said to be in exchange for the so-called ‘blood diamonds’ mined by the rebels in conflict zones. But Taylor denied all the charges.
Agence France Presse, AFP news agency reported that Charles Taylor who was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and red tie, listened attentively and took notes as Judge Richard Lussick started reading a summary of the verdict, the first ever against a former Head of State by a world court since the World War II Nuremberg trial. The court session was also screened in Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown, where people gathered to hear the verdict being delivered at the court in Leidschendam near The Hague.
Alhadji Jusu Jarka, the former Chairman of the Amputees Association, told reporters in Freetown as he watched the proceedings on television that victims of the war are hopeful that Taylor will be given 100 years or more in prison. Sitting calmly with his prosthetic arms folded in his lap, Jarka recounted how the rebels held him down on the root of a mango tree in the capital and cut off first the left arm, and then the right - all above the elbow.
According to CNN, Charles Taylor was President of Liberia - where he was also blamed for fueling a lengthy civil war - for six years until 2003 when intense international pressure forced him out of office. He then lived in exile in Nigeria where border guards arrested him in 2006 as he was attempting to cross into Chad amid international calls for his arrest. After his sentencing which is due at a later date, Taylor is expected to serve time in a British prison.
