IPNEWS: It has been eighteen years since March 29, 2006, when former Liberian President Charles Taylor was apprehended, prosecuted and incarcerated into British jail for 50-year jail sentence for war crimes against humanity, recruitment of child soldiers and armed trafficking.
Prior to being forced into exile, as Taylor prepared to step down under U.S. pressure to end 14 years of strife that has spawned chaos in West Africa.
In his farewell address before handing over to Vice-President Moses Blah, former Liberian President Charles Taylor accused Washington of supporting the rebels who were fighting to oust him. He said he is being forced into exile.
“I can no longer see you suffering — the suffering is enough; you have been good people. I love you from the bottom of my heart,” Mr. Taylor said, his face worn and tired and his beard tinged with grey. “I say God willing, I will be back.”
At least 2,000 people have been killed since June in the latest bout of blood-letting to grip the capital of a country that was founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century and is now a pariah state plagued by violence.
Controlling only part of his own capital, told to step down by U.S. President George W. Bush and wanted for war crimes by a United-Nations-backed tribunal in Sierra Leone, Mr. Taylor had little choice but to step down or fight to the death.
Mr. Blah said he will invite leaders of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy for talks as soon as he takes office, and is “100-per-cent sure” of ending the country’s humanitarian crisis.
“This is over. We should lay down the guns and smoke the peace pipe,” said Mr. Blah, whom the rebels have said they will reject as just another of Mr. Taylor’s old guard.
The arrival of West African peacekeepers last week fulfilled Mr. Taylor’s condition for bowing out.
U.S. warships wait offshore with 2,300 marines, but Mr. Bush has not decided whether to commit ground troops.
Mr. Taylor had not said when he will leave, but South Africa’s ambassador said he will go after transition of power.
Mr. Taylor had earlier said he will accept a Nigerian asylum offer; two flights carrying his family members and property — including three cars — landed yesterday in the steamy southeast Nigerian town of Calabar, officials there said.
West African leaders are keen to see the back of Mr. Taylor, who has been accused of helping plot conflicts that have left a quarter of a million people dead in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast.
Scores of fighters emerged from both sides of the front in Monrovia yesterday, hugging, joking and swapping cigarettes and clothes on the bridges where battle raged a week ago.
“Even if our commanders tell us to fight, I personally will not fight. There is no need for war,” said a young general named T-Boy as he chatted with LURD commanders.
But while the guns are silent in the capital, there is little sign of a let-up in the dire humanitarian crisis here.
The UN estimates that at least 450,000 people are displaced in Monrovia — many of them hungry and sick.
Markets have only a few green leaves for sauce on sale. Prices for the staple rice have risen by five times or more.
“We thank God the bullets have stopped,” said Moifee Sombai, standing on a street where stray gunfire killed many. “But now it is the silent weapons. We are dying silently.”
The situation might ease if the rebels reopened the port, where they have already pillaged supplies of food aid.
But they have been reluctant to relinquish their hold on ground captured in recent fighting while they say they are still unsure that the wily Mr. Taylor will fulfil his pledge to step down and leave.
Charles Taylor, the convicted former Liberian president, is now serving his 50-year sentence for war crimes in a British prison.
The announcement follows a final ruling by the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) in The Hague last month. The UK is the only country that has publicly offered to accommodate him.
The offer was made in 2006 by the then foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, as part of a diplomatic deal to bring the onetime warlord to justice. For the past seven years Taylor, now 65, has been held in a small Dutch jail pending the last appeal stage of the UN tribunal.
Lawyers for Taylor had pressed the court to allow him to serve out his sentence in an African jail nearer home.
Justice minister Jeremy Wright told parliament in a written statement: “Former President Taylor will now be transferred to a prison in the UK to serve [his] sentence.”
He added: “The United Kingdom’s offer to enforce any sentence imposed on former President Taylor by the SCSL was crucial to ensuring that he could be transferred to The Hague to stand trial for his crimes.” He said the decision had wide cross party support when it was passed in June 2007 and that “Her Majesty’s government would meet the associated costs”.
“International justice is central to foreign policy. It is essential for securing the rights of individuals and states, and for securing peace and reconciliation,” he said. “The conviction of Charles Taylor is a landmark moment for international justice. It clearly demonstrates that those who commit atrocities will be held to account and that no matter their position they will not enjoy impunity.”
The minister did not identify which prison Taylor will be held in. It is likely, at least initially, to be a high security jail.
The average cost of keeping a prisoner in a British jail is around £40,000 a year. Conditions in a British prison are likely to be more restrictive for Taylor than his experiences in Scheveningen jail in the Netherlands, where he has been detained for the past seven years. A recent biography claimed he had fathered a child with his wife during conjugal visits there.
The Hague court found Taylor guilty of 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law, including murder, forced labour and slavery, recruiting child soldiers and rape.
He had been criminally responsible for “aiding and abetting” the Revolutionary United Front and other factions carrying out atrocities in Sierra Leone between 1996 and 2002.
The court heard that the Liberian leader knew from August 1997 about the campaign of terror being waged against the civilian population in Sierra Leone and about the sale of “blood diamonds” in return for weapons.
Among the atrocities detailed was the beheading of civilians. Victims’ heads were often displayed at checkpoints. On one occasion a man was killed, publicly disembowelled and his intestines stretched across a road to form another checkpoint. “The purpose,” Judge Richard Lussick said, “was to instil terror.”
Taylor was the first former head of state to face judgment in an international court on war crimes charges since judges in Nuremberg convicted Karl Dönitz, the admiral who led Nazi Germany for a brief period following Adolf Hitler’s suicide.
The UK’s record on holding war crimes inmates is not unblemished. In 2010, the Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstić, who was serving a 35-year sentence in Wakefield prison, was stabbed in his cell by three Muslim inmates.
