Bloody Past Is Catching Up With Liberian Despot (Charles Taylor)

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 7-1-2005 | David Blair

[blam]

Bloody past is catching up with Liberian despot

By David Blair in Calabar
(Filed: 02/07/2005)

After impoverishing his country, killing thousands and stealing a fortune, Africa's most notorious fallen tyrant is facing a rising clamour for him to face justice.

Charles Taylor, the deposed president of Liberia, benefits from asylum in Nigeria despite being the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant and an indictment on 17 counts of war crimes.

Charles Taylor: Africa's most prominent fugitive

A life steeped in bloodshed has not prevented Taylor from enjoying Nigeria's official hospitality and a grace-and-favour residence in a government lodge in the city of Calabar.

Yet his immunity may be about to end. Yesterday, 300 human rights groups, including Amnesty International, urged Nigeria to surrender Taylor for a war crimes trial.

Kolawole Olaniyan, the director of Amnesty's Africa programme, said this would "not only bring justice to the countless victims of Charles Taylor and their families" but combat the "disastrous cycle of impunity in West Africa".

Nigeria's government prizes its reputation. President Olusegun Obasanjo will address the G8 summit in Gleneagles next week, one of a few African leaders granted this favour.

Unless he surrenders Taylor, Mr Obasanjo will find himself pledging "good governance" while harbouring Africa's most prominent fugitive.

Taylor, a lay preacher, led a brutal guerrilla army that plunged Liberia into bloody turmoil. When a BBC interviewer suggested he was a murderer, he replied: "Jesus Christ was accused of being a murderer in his time."

Taylor was elected president in 1997 after telling Liberians that if he lost the poll, he would go back to war and resume the killing. His rallies echoed to the chant: "He killed my Ma, he killed my Pa, he gets my vote."

Taylor stays in a crumbling lodge with security service agents loitering outside.

"When you meet Taylor, he does not come across as a man who has done all these bad things," said one agent. "But he must be pleasant because of his situation here."

When Mr Obasanjo granted asylum, he was trying to avoid the bloodshed that would have resulted from a full-scale rebel assault on Liberia's capital, Monrovia. But asylum came on condition that he avoided politics.

Taylor, 57, appears to have broken this deal and is accused of "training and arming a small but potent force that poses a significant threat to West African stability".

Last week, the UN Security Council passed a British-sponsored resolution saying he was "undermining peace and stability in Liberia".

Sir Emyr Jones Parry, Britain's UN Ambassador, said: "Taylor cannot avoid coming to justice and his impunity will have to end. The only question is how we do it."

[ncountylee]

Is he going to LIVE 8 ?

[TheForceOfOne]

Hello Hillary, can you hear me now?

[Southack]

Lousy journalism. Taylor stepped down the day that President Bush landed U.S. troops in Liberia (last year or '03). You wouldn't even know that an American military presence was responsible for Taylor stepping down if you depended upon such rotten journalism...

[blam]

"You wouldn't even know that an American military presence was responsible for Taylor stepping down if you depended upon such rotten journalism..."

Yup.

I believe Taylor escaped from a prison in the US northeast and made his way to Liberia.

[Southack]

That too.

[river rat]

I just can't wait to send more money to these murderous, greedy, corrupt racist bastards...

Semper Fi