Friday 27 September 2013

Charles Taylor: Liberia’s former president finally faces punishment for his horrific war crimes



If there is an enduring image of all the horrific
wars in Africa, one in particular has the power
to reach across the years. It is the sight of the
maimed and mutilated children in Sierra Leone,
their limbs hacked off by child soldiers high on
drugs who were as young as their victims. The man responsible for that infamy was
Charles Taylor, the president of neighbouring
Liberia whose 50-year jail sentence was upheld
by a UN-backed appeals court on Thursday, in
the first conviction of a former head of state
by an international court since Nuremberg. He is to serve out the sentence in Britain. Mutilation, rape and abductions were the
hallmark of the civil war launched by rebels of
the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in the
early 1990s. The war was funded by the illegally
mined so-called “blood diamonds”, from mines
in eastern Sierra Leone, which were smuggled to Taylor, the former brutal warlord turned
president who in return supplied, trained and
armed the rebels. He was convicted by the UN
court of “aiding and abetting” the rebels in
their reign of terror during the war that claimed
50,000 lives between 1991 and 2001. Taylor, a flamboyant showman now grizzled at
65, consistently denied any responsibility and
pleaded not guilty. He depicted himself as a
statesman and West African peacemaker who
had only dealt with the rebels “to push the
peace process hard”, when conducting his own defence over a seven-month period. But after
a four-year trial the UN court found him guilty
of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against
humanity, including murder, rape, torture and
the use of child soldiers. Taylor will forever be associated with the
conflicts that convulsed West Africa for more
than a decade, and cast a long shadow over the
region where he wreaked violence and havoc
from Guinea to Cote d’Ivoire. He was one of seven children born to an
Americo-Liberian father, descended from the
freed slaves who founded the country and who
remained politically influential. His mother was
a native Liberian from the Golah tribe. Like
many other Americo-Liberians, Taylor studied in America, and became active in radical
student politics as chairman of the Union of
Liberian Associations at his college in Bentley,
Massachusetts. He returned home to work with Liberian
president Samuel Doe who seized power in
1980. But the two fell out and Taylor fled back
to America where he served a short jail
sentence after being accused by Doe of
embezzling more than $1m. He subsequently led a Libyan-backed rebellion
in 1989 against Doe who was captured,
tortured, mutilated and summarily executed on
a Monrovia beach seven months later. “The
only good Doe is a dead Doe,” Taylor is
reported to have said. The horror was just beginning. Doe’s death at
the hands of forces loyal to Prince Johnson,
triggered a five-year conflict between the
Americo- Liberian fighters led by Taylor and
Johnson’s rival forces. In 1991, the RUF
launched their revolt in Sierra Leone, and another civil war was kindled. Liberian peace accords were finally signed in
Monrovia in 1995, paving the way for elections
which Taylor won by a wide margin in 1997,
amid charges that supporters had been
terrorised into voting for him. But his
presidency was undercut by domestic opponents who took up arms against him in
1999, and by international pressures stemming
from his involvement in the Sierra Leone
conflict. In 2003, with the Liberian rebels gaining
strength in the mineral-rich country and having
entered Monrovia, he was indicted by a UN-
backed Special Court for his role in the Sierra
Leone fighting and fled to Nigeria. But he was
accused of meddling in Liberian politics from there. A total 200,000 people were killed in the
two Liberian civil wars over a 14-year period. Liberia’s fortunes changed for the better
following the 2006 election of Ellen Sirleaf
Johnson as president. She pushed for Taylor’s
prosecution by the Sierra Leone war crimes
tribunal despite protests by his followers. He
was arrested in Nigeria the same year after she requested his extradition. But in those early days of the UN court, it was
by no means clear that regional stability would
be restored by Taylor’s arrest amid fears that
loyalists might take up arms again. As a result,
the trial was moved to The Hague for security
reasons. The Special Court was set up under an ad hoc arrangement between the UN and Sierra
Leone and was not covered by the
permanently-sitting International Criminal
Court, which can only rule on war crimes and
crimes against humanity committed after
2002. UN prosecutors doggedly pressed the Taylor
case, calling such witnesses as the British
model Naomi Campbell and the US actress Mia
Farrow to the bar, when the trial opened in
2007. Campbell recounted how, after a 1997
dinner party hosted by Nelson Mandela in South Africa, she had found “a few stones”
outside her hotel door. “They were small
stones, dirty looking stones.” According to
Farrow, the blood diamonds were a gift from
Taylor, who denied any knowledge of the
incident and has never admitted to trading in the precious stones to fund the Sierra Leone
conflict. Like another dictator, Slobodan Milosevic of
Serbia, Taylor was careful not to take direct
command. But he provided essential weaponry,
training and safe haven for the Sierra Leone
fighters, many of whom were abducted, given
marijuana or crack cocaine and sent into the bush with AK47s to kill and maim entire
families. Victims would be asked if they
preferred “long sleeves” or “short sleeves”
before their hands or their arms above the
elbow were hacked off. After being found guilty last year by the Special
Court, Taylor appealed. But on Thursday the
appeal chamber judges were unanimous in
upholding the guilty verdict, which was
described as “fair and reasonable”. The judges
ignored an earlier ruling by the UN court for the former Yugoslavia which ordered the release of
the former chief of the former Yugoslav army,
General Momsilo Perisic, last February. He too
had been accused of “aiding and abetting”
human rights crimes, but the judges decided
that Perisic had not “specifically directed” aid towards that end. The Special Court has now heard its last case,
but a new chapter opens in which the search
for Taylor’s suspected hidden assets will
resume. Victims of the Sierra Leone rebels’
atrocities will, theoretically at least, be able to
pursue compensation through civil tribunals. Looking back on the Taylor trial, John Petrie,
formerly the chief of operations at the Sierra
Leone Special Court and now a director of
Aegis Trust, a British non-government
organisation campaigning to prevent genocide
worldwide, said: “It is easy now to think it was all inevitable, but that was not the case in
2002-05. “Some very brave people took brave decisions
to break the cycle of violence in the region and
removing Taylor was central to that. He did not
come quietly, but he has plenty of time to
reflect.” Taylor, a Baptist and one-time lay preacher, will
indeed have plenty time to reflect in his cell on
being held accountable for his sins. He once
compared himself to Jesus Christ, telling the
BBC: “Jesus Christ was accused of being a
murderer in his time.” According to Reed Brody, a lawyer and
spokesman for Human Rights Watch who
devoted 15 years working for the prosecution
of Chadian dictator Hissène Habré, Taylor
stood out because of his baleful influence over
such a wide swath of West Africa. “On a continent which has, unfortunately, seen
its share of untouchable ‘big men’, the crimes
of the rebels he supported in Sierra Leone, like
their signature atrocity of cutting off victims’
arms and legs, and forcing children to execute
their parents, were among the most heartless I have ever investigated,” Mr Brody said. A Life In Brief Born: Charles McArthur Taylor born in Arthington, Liberia, on 28 January 1948. He
added the name “Ghankay” later, thought to be
so that he could gain favour with the
indigenous African majority Family: Americo-Liberian father and Liberian mother. He has married three times and has 14
children Education: Economics degree from Bentley College, Massachusetts, US Career: After his studies in the US, Taylor returned to Liberia, just after Samuel Doe’s
coup d’etat in 1980. He was given a role
running the General Services Agency, in charge
of much of Liberia’s budget. After being
accused of embezzling, he fled to the US
where he was arrested. He returned to Liberia to lead the 1989 overthrow of Doe. Elected
president in 1997. A 1999 rebellion led to him
seeking exile in Nigeria in 2003. Taylor was
arrested and appeared at the Special Court for
Sierra Leone in 2006. What he says: “Jesus Christ was accused of being a murderer in his time” What they say: “I had never heard of Charles Taylor before. I had never heard of the country
Liberia before. I had never heard the term
blood diamonds before.” Naomi Campbell, model, and witness in the Taylor’s war crimes
trial

No comments:

Post a Comment