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I was peacemaker not war criminal says Charles Taylor
FORMER Liberian president Charles Taylor, accused of running a murderous band of rebels in pursuit of a fortune in blood diamonds, will tell the world he did nothing wrong when he takes the witness box at his war crimes trial today.
He has claimed his role in a savage civil war that tore apart neighbouring Sierra Leone and left hundreds of thousands dead or mutilated, was as a peacemaker.
British lawyer Courtenay Griffiths opening Taylor's defence at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague yesterday urged the judges to give him a fair hearing, and not to be overwhelmed by the parade of misery presented by the prosecution since the trial opened 18 months ago.
"No one who has seen the procession through this courtroom of hurt human beings reliving the most grotesque trauma would have been unmoved," Mr Griffiths told the three-judge panel. "We are human too, even while we declare this accused man to be not guilty of the charges he faces."
Taylor, 61, the first African head of state to be tried by an international court, is charged with 11 counts of murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery, using child soldiers and spreading terror.
His trial has been hailed as a groundbreaking example of denying impunity to autocrats who have evaded responsibility for mass murders and human rights outrages.
The relevance of the case appears heightened by the refusal of Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, to answer a summons by the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague, to respond to charges of crimes against humanity in Darfur. Most African leaders have supported al-Bashir in his defiance and refuse to arrest him.
Prosecutors at the UN-backed court say Taylor backed Sierra Leone rebels to help gain control of the neighbouring country and strip it of its vast diamond wealth.
Some of the 91 witnesses called claimed he shipped weapons to rebels in rice sacks in contravention of an arms embargo and in return got so-called blood diamonds – gems mined by slave labour.
One prosecution witness took the stand with stumps where his hands had been hacked off. A woman testified that she was forced to carry a sack full of severed heads including those of her children.
One of Taylor's former aides told judges he was with Taylor when the president ate a human liver.
The trial continues.
LAND OF DRUGGED CHILD SOLDIERS
Charles Taylor completed an economics degree in the United States and military training in Libya before rising to power as a rebel warlord in Liberia, and being elected president in 1997.
About 500,000 people are estimated to have been victims of killings, systematic mutilation and other atrocities in Sierra Leone's civil war.
Some of the worst crimes were carried out by gangs of child soldiers, who were fed drugs to desensitise them to the horror of their actions.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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