Taylor Arrested and Set to Stand Trial for War Crimes

Charles G. Taylor, West African Warlord and former President of Liberia, has been arrested and repatriated to Sierra Leone, where he will stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was taken into custody by the Nigerian Police in Borno State in northern Nigeria early Wednesday morning after a foiled attempt to escape justice.

On Monday night, just 48 hours after Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo granted Liberia’s request to extradite Taylor, the Nigerian authorities discovered that the former president had vanished from his guest villa in Calabar, south-eastern Nigeria. Mr. Taylor was apprehended by Customs officials on Wednesday at the remote Gamboru-Ngala border post, over 600 miles north of Calabar, as he tried to cross over to Cameroon with his son, an unidentified woman and a substantial amount of US dollars.

Mr. Taylor was promptly arrested and taken to Maiduguri, the state capital, where he boarded a presidential jet bound for Monrovia, Liberia. Upon his arrival in Liberia, he was handed over to UN peacekeepers who escorted him to Freetown, Sierra Leone in a UN helicopter.

The former leader is currently in a cell, awaiting trial before UN backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. He was indicted in March 2003 on 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his involvement in the decade long Sierra Leonean civil war. Taylor is accused of providing funding to Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, the group that plunged the country into a brutal war that claimed at least 50,000 lives and maimed many more. He will be tried on only 11 counts, as the Court recently reduced the number of charges in order to consolidate the prosecution’s case. He is expected to make his first court appearance this week.

Taylor will be the first African head of state to be tried for war crimes by an international tribunal. Desmond de Silva, the Prosecutor of the case noted, “His presence in the custody of the Special Court sends out the clear message that no matter how rich, powerful or feared people may be, the law is above them.”

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Updated March 30, 2006

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