Judges to deliver verdict in war crimes trial of Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor, the warlord who rose to lead Liberia, could become the first ex-president to be consigned to a British prison cell after judgment is delivered in his war crimes trial today.
“The government calls on all Liberians to remain calm and peaceful and to pray for the nation and peace,”
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s office said in a statement released on Wednesday.
Mr Taylor has been on trial at the court sitting in The Hague for almost five years. He is accused of backing rebels who killed thousands during Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war. They became notorious for using child soldiers and hacking off the limbs of enemies. He launched a rebellion in Liberia in 1989 in a bid to overthrow the hated regime of Samuel Doe, a move which descended into bloody civil war with a panoply of factions.
Taylor was elected president in 1997 but two years later civil war broke out anew and fighting only ended when he fled to Nigeria in 2003. He remained out of reach there until Nigeria in March 2006 bowed to international calls to extradite him.
Mr Taylor denies 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Tens of thousands of people died in Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war which ended in 2002. If Mr Taylor is found guilty he is expected to go to a prison in the UK.
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