Charles Taylor
Charles Ghankay Taylor (born
January 28,
1948) is a
Liberian leader who served as
President of Liberia from 1997 to 2003. He was a prominent
warlord in the
Liberian Civil War in the early 1990s, was elected president, was forced into
exile, and now faces trial.
In December 1989 Taylor launched an armed uprising from
Côte d'Ivoire. His forces, known as the
National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), soon controlled most of the country. Then-president
Samuel Doe was overthrown, and tortured to death the following year by
Prince Johnson, at that time an ally of Taylor. Doe's fall led to the
political fragmentation of the country into violent factionalism. In mid-1990, Prince Johnson's supporters split from Taylor's group and captured Monrovia for themselves, depriving Taylor of outright victory.
The civil war turned into an ethnic conflict, with seven factions fighting for control of Liberia's resources (especially
iron ore,
diamond,
timber, and
rubber). Up to 200,000 people were killed, and more than 1 million were forced from their homes.
Following the recent election of a new President in Liberia, the Nigerian government stated on
March 25,
2006, that Liberia was free to collect Taylor so that he may face war crimes charges in Liberian courts. The Nigerian government announced on
March 28 that Taylor had disappeared from his residence in
Calabar, Nigeria. On
March 29,
2006, Taylor was arrested in Gamboru, along Nigeria's northeastern border with
Cameroon. Nigerian authorities put him on a plane bound for Liberia and then handed him to the UN in
Sierra Leone. On
March 30, the Special Court requested permission to use the premises of the
International Criminal Court in
The Hague to carry out the trial of Charles Taylor, although the Special Court will still conduct the proceedings of the trial.
As of
June 20,
2006, the ex-president was finally on his way to
The Hague.
Charles Taylor was born in
Arthington, a city near
Monrovia. His mother was a member of the
Gola ethnic group. According to most reports his father was an
Americo-Liberian, although other sources claim he was actually an
Afro-Trinidadian immigrant. Taylor was a student at
Bentley College in
Waltham,
Massachusetts from 1972 to 1977, earning a degree in economics.
He was briefly arrested in 1979 after threatening to take over the Liberian
diplomatic mission in
New York and was accused of embezzling roughly $900,000 as head of Liberia's General Services Administration. On
May 24,
1984, two
US Deputy Marshals arrested Taylor in
Somerville, Massachusetts, on a warrant for extradition to face charges of embezzling $922,000 of government funds, intended for machinery parts, into a New York bank account. Citing a fear of assassination by Liberian agents, it was announced by Taylor's lawyer, former US Attorney General
Ramsey Clark, that Taylor would fight extradition from the safety of jail. He was detained in a House of Corrections in
Plymouth, Massachusetts. On Sunday,
September 15,
1985, sometime around 8:30 p.m., Taylor and four other inmates escaped from the jail by sawing through a bar covering a window in an unused laundry room. After dropping 12 feet to the ground by means of a knotted sheet, the five inmates climbed a fence. Shortly thereafter, Taylor and two other escapees were met at nearby Jordan Hospital by Taylor's wife, Enid Taylor, and Taylor's sister-in-law, Lucia Holmes Toweh. A getaway car was driven to
Staten Island, where Taylor then disappeared. The first escapee to be caught was apprehended on
September 18 in
Brockton, Massachusetts; eventually all four of Taylor's fellow escapees would be tracked down, and Enid Taylor and Lucia Holmes Toweh were ordered held without bail on
September 23 for driving the getaway car. Taylor managed to flee the United States and shortly thereafter ended up in Libya where he underwent guerilla training under
Muammar Qaddafi. Eventually he left Libya and used the training he gained there to begin a civil war in
Liberia.
In 1991,
Foday Sankoh began a revolutionary campaign in
Sierra Leone near the Liberian border as the leader of the
Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Among that initial group of about 100 revolutionaries were Sierra Leonean dissidents, mercenaries from
Burkina Faso, and fighters loyal to Taylor. The relationship between Sankoh and Taylor had begun in the 1980s when both men were in Libya with the purpose of learning from and gaining the support of
Muammar Qaddafi. These men were joined in their opposition of what they saw to be pro-western regimes. Once the
Sierra Leone Civil War began, Sankoh relied heavily on ties with both Qaddafi and Taylor, with whom he traded
diamonds for guns
[Hirsch, John L. "Sierra Leone: Diamonds and the Struggle for Democracy". Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001].
When in 1992,
Sam Bockarie rose to the position of Battle Group Commander in the RUF, Taylor reached out to the young man, whom he may have met during Bockarie's youth. Taylor advised Bockarie off and on for the next five years, and when Sankoh went into exile in Nigeria in March of 1997, Bockarie took the position of leader of the RUF. Taylor's support of Bockarie, both in the form of arms and advice, allowed the RUF to march on
Freetown, and eventually forced President
Ahmad Tejan Kabbah to negotiate. The
Lomé Peace Accord was signed in July of 1999, although violence continued until 2001. On
7 March,
2003, the
Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) indicted Taylor, charging him with
crimes against humanity, an indictment which still stands. In 2003, Liberian forces under the orders of Taylor killed Bockarie in a shootout. Some have claimed that Taylor ordered Bockarie killed in order to prevent Bockarie from testifying against him at the SCSL
["The Mysterious Death of a Fugitive". The Perspective. Atlanta, Georgia May 7, 2003[1]].
After the official end of the civil war in 1996, Taylor became Liberia's president on
August 2,
1997, following a
landslide victory in July, in which he took 75% of the vote. The election was judged free and fair by some observers, although Taylor's victory has been widely attributed to the belief that he would resume the war if he lost. He famously ran on the slogan "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him."[
2] Because of this threat to restart the war in which Liberia's population had literally been decimated, many people voted for him simply to preserve peace. The elections were overseen by the United Nation's peacekeeping mission,
UNMIL, along with a contingent from
ECOWAS.
In 1999, a rebellion against Taylor began in northern Liberia, led by a group calling itself
Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). This group was frequently accused of atrocities, and is thought to have been backed by the government of neighboring
Guinea.
In early 2003, with LURD in control of northern Liberia, a second rebel group, called the
Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) and allegedly backed by the Ivorian government, emerged in southern Liberia and achieved rapid successes. By the summer, Taylor's government controlled only about a third of Liberia: Monrovia and the central part of the country.
In June 2003, a
United Nations justice tribunal issued a warrant for Taylor's arrest, charging him with
war crimes. The UN asserts that Taylor created and backed the RUF rebels in Sierra Leone, which are accused of a range of atrocities, including the use of
child soldiers. The prosecutor also said Taylor's administration had harbored members of Al-Qaeda sought in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. [
3]
The indictment was issued at Taylor's official visit to
Ghana. With the backing of
South African president
Thabo Mbeki, against the urging of Sierra Leone president
Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, Ghanaian police failed to arrest Taylor, who returned to Monrovia.
During his absence for the peace talks in Ghana, it is alleged that the US urged the
vice president,
Moses Blah, to seize power. Upon his return, Taylor briefly dismissed Blah from his post, only to reinstate him a few days later. Meanwhile, the rebel group LURD initiated a siege of Monrovia, and several bloody battles were fought as Taylor's forces defeated rebel attempts to capture the city. The pressure on Taylor increased further as
U.S. President George W. Bush stated that Taylor "must leave Liberia" twice in July 2003.
Taylor insisted that he would resign only if American
peacekeeping troops were deployed to Liberia. President Bush publicly called upon Charles Taylor to resign and leave the country if any American involvement was to be considered. Meanwhile, the African states, in particular the
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), under the leadership of Nigeria, sent troops to Liberia with the assistance of $10 million from the US[
4]. On
August 6, a 32 member U.S. military assessment team were deployed as a liaison with the ECOWAS troops[
5]. On
July 9, Nigerian President
Olusegun Obasanjo offered Taylor safe exile in his country, but only if Taylor stayed out of Liberian politics[
6].
On
August 10, Charles Taylor appeared on national television in Liberia to announce that he would resign the following day and hand power to the nation's vice president, Moses Blah. He harshly criticized the United States in his
farewell address, saying that the Bush administration's insistence that he leave the country was a foolish policy that would hurt Liberia.
On
August 11, Taylor resigned, leaving Moses Blah as his successor until a transitional government was established on
October 14. At the handover were Ghanaian President
John Kufuor, South African President
Thabo Mbeki, and Mozambican President
Joaquim Chissano, representing African regional councils. The U.S. brought three warships with 2,300 Marines into view of the coast. Taylor flew to
Nigeria where the Nigerian government provided houses for him and his entourage in
Calabar.
In November 2003, the
United States Congress passed a bill that included a reward offer of two million dollars for Taylor's capture. While the peace agreement had guaranteed Taylor safe exile in Nigeria, it also required that he not attempt to influence Liberian politics, a requirement his critics claim he has disregarded. On
December 4,
Interpol issued a "red notice", suggesting that countries have the international right to arrest him. Taylor was placed on Interpol's Most Wanted list, noted as possibly being dangerous, wanted for "crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the 1949
Geneva Convention." Nigeria, where Taylor was residing, initially stated that they would not submit to Interpol's demands, unless Liberia wanted to try him; in that case Nigeria would return Taylor to Liberia for trial.
On
6 March,
2004, the United States presented a draft resolution to the
United Nations Security Council seeking a freeze of Taylor's assets, as well as those of his family and allies.
On
17 March 2006,
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the new democratically elected
President of Liberia, submitted an official request to Nigeria for the extradition of Charles Taylor. This request was granted on
25 March, whereby Nigeria agreed to release Taylor to stand trial in the
Special Court for Sierra Leone. Nigeria agreed only to release Taylor and not to extradite him, as no
extradition treaty exists between the two countries.
According to a statement released on
March 28,
2006, by Nigeria's government, Charles Taylor disappeared from the seaside villa where he had been living in exile. This was three days after the Nigerian government said it would end his asylum and allow him to face an indictment by the
Special Court for Sierra Leone.
[Polgreen, Lydia. "Nigeria Says Ex-President of Liberia Has Disappeared". The New York Times. 29 March 2006. [7]] On
March 29,
2006, Taylor tried to cross the border into
Cameroon, but was arrested by the security forces in the border town of
Gamboru in northeastern
Nigeria. Guarded by Irish UN soldiers, he was put on a plane bound for
Liberia and arrived in
Monrovia shortly after 4:30 p.m. (1630 GMT). Taylor was immediately transferred onto a
UN helicopter headed for
Freetown,
Sierra Leone.
Only days after Taylor's arrest, his son
Charles McArthur Emmanuel, known as Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr. was arrested in
Miami, charged with passport fraud. [
8]
Taylor was held in a UN jail in
Sierra Leone's capital,
Freetown, while waiting for his
extradition. He is to be tried under the auspices of the
Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL).
["Charles Taylor jailed in Sierra Leone". CBC News, 29 March 2006. [9]] The prosecutor originally indicted Taylor on
3 March,
2003 on a 654-count indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the conflict in Sierra Leone. But, on
16 March,
2006, a judge of the SCSL gave leave to amend the indictment against Taylor. Under the amended indictment, Taylor is charged with 650 counts. At Taylor's initial appearance before the court on
3 April,
2006, he entered a plea of not guilty.
[de Silva, Desmond, QC, Chief Prosecutor, Special Court for Sierra Leone. "Chief Prosecutor Announces the Arrival of Charles Taylor at the Special Court". Press Release from the Special Court for Sierra Leone, 29 March 2006. [10]]In early June 2006, the decision on whether to hold Taylor's trial in
Freetown or in
The Hague,
The Netherlands had not yet been made by new SCSL president
George Gelaga King. King's predecessor had pushed for the trial to be held abroad because of fears that a local trial would be politically destabilizing. The Appeals Chamber of the Special Court dismissed a motion by Taylor's defense team, who argued that their client could not get a fair trial there and wanted the Special Court to withdraw the request to move the trial to The Hague.
[1 June 2006] On
15 June 2006, the British government agreed to jail Taylor in the event that he is convicted by the SCSL. This removed an obstacle after the Dutch government stated they would host the trial but would not jail him if convicted, and a number of European countries refused to host him. British Foreign Minister
Margaret Beckett stated that new legislation would be required.
[[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5082664.stm UK agrees to jail Charles Taylor, BBC News, 15 June 2006] On
June 16, 2006, the
United Nations Security Council agreed unanimously to allow Charles Taylor to be sent to The Hague for trial and on
June 20,
2006, Taylor was extradited and flown to
Rotterdam Airport in
the Netherlands [
11]. He will be taken into custody in the UN war crimes tribunal's detention centre, located in the
Scheveningen section of
The Hague.
According to a
June 2,
1999, article in
The Virginian-Pilot,
[Sizemore, Bill. "Robertson, Liberian Leader Hope to Strike Gold in Coastal Africa." The Virginian-Pilot. 2 June 1999. (Copy found at [12].) Charles Taylor...] Taylor had extensive business dealings with
televangelist Pat Robertson. According to the article, Taylor gave Robertson (who also had business dealings with
Mobutu Sese Seko of
Zaire) the rights to mine for
diamonds in Liberia's mineral-rich countryside. According to two airplane pilots who reported this incident to the state of
Virginia for investigation in 1994, Robertson used his
Operation Blessing planes to haul diamond-mining equipment to Robertson's mines in Liberia, despite the fact that Robertson was telling his
700 Club viewers that the planes were sending relief supplies to the victims of the
genocide in
Rwanda. The subsequent investigation by the state of
Virginia concluded that Robertson diverted his ministry's donations to the Liberian diamond-mining operation, but
Attorney General of Virginia Mark Earley blocked any potential prosecution against Robertson.[
13]
Charles Taylor has obtained spiritual and other advice from the evangelist
Kilari Anand Paul.[
14]
The character Andre Baptiste, Sr. from the movie
Lord of War is said to be based on Charles Taylor.
#
The Liberian Civil War by Mark Huband, 1998
*
List of Dictators*
BBC profile of Charles Taylor*
Charles Taylor legal news and resources,
JURIST*
Handing Over Charles Taylor: It's Time,
JURIST (op-ed by David Crane, former Chief Prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone who signed the indictment for Charles Taylor)
*
Nigeria agrees to hand Taylor over to Liberia*
Wanted Liberian ex-president disappears (Reuters)*
"Charles Taylor: A wanted man", CNN, March 29, 2006.
*
Special Court for Sierra Leone*
The trial of Charles Taylor - TRIAL WATCH*
Charles Taylor on Trial U.S. Institute of Peace, April 7, 2006 (Audio)
