Charles Taylor accused of crimes against humanity
Tuesday, 4 April 2006
Charles Taylor accused of crimes against humanity
Charles Taylor appeared before a UN backed War Crimes court in Sierra Leone, on Monday April 3rd, where 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity were read against him.
The charges against Taylor include murder, rape, sexual slavery, physical violence and cruel treatment, recruiting child soldiers and terrorising the civilian population. Before pleading not guilty to the charges, Mr Taylor told the judge, "I do not recognise the jurisdiction of this court."
Concern’s Anne O’Mahony has supported calls for former Liberian leader, Charles Taylor to face trial in the Hague. Speaking on RTE’s News at One programme, Concern’s Anne O’Mahony said, “As long as Taylor remains in the region there would be cause for concern. For the sake of stability in Sierra Leone, Liberia and the wider region, the best thing that could happen would be for Taylor to be brought to the Hague and tried there.”
The chief prosecutor at the court describes 58-year-old Mr Taylor as one of the three worst war criminals in the world, alongside the Serbian fugitives Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.
Anne O’Mahony praised the role of Liberia’s new president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in the process of bringing Taylor to justice and commented that the situation could not have come so far without the fortitude shown by her. Anne continued, “The events of the past few days will come as a great relief to the long suffering people of Liberia, not to mention the victims of Sierra Leone’s awful civil war. There is now a real opportunity for peace and stability in Liberia for the first time in over 15 years.
“Even while Taylor was in exile in Nigeria his power and wealth threatened to destabilise the new but fragile peace in Liberia. His own actions of trying to flee his place of exile in fact fast tracked his handover to the Sierra Leone courts” Anne said.
Taylor disappeared from his residence in southeastern Nigeria before his arrest last Thursday. It had been feared that he would make his way back to Liberia to undermine the country’s new found peace and the administration of newly elected President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Mr Taylor went into exile in Nigeria in 2003 thereby ending Liberia's long running civil war. There have been repeated calls in the intervening years to hand him over to the war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone where he has been indicted, being accused of supporting brutal rebels in exchange for diamonds to finance the Liberian conflict. Through his diamond dealings, timber logging and various other activities Taylor accumulated great wealth throughout the 1990s which has remained untraceable in the years since his exile.
