Africans anxiously awaits the Taylor’s verdict

By ralph geeplay

Former Liberian president Charles Ghankay Macarthur Taylor, who was elected president in 1998 after a long ‘bush war’ which began in Liberia’s Nimba County on Christmas Eve in 1989, will face justice this Thursday in the Netherlands. He is the first African president to be tried on a continent where leaders like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and Sudan’s Oman al Bashir plus countless other despots still enjoy state power as they terrorize their own people. Matter of fact, Bashir has been indicted, but he still eludes justice. If Taylor is acquitted jitters could run throughout West Africa, where the former Liberian president is accused of trading arms for minerals, especially diamonds in Sierra Leone. Flushed with cash from Liberia’s timber and its resources, he meddled and also exported his war to Liberia’s neighbors: Guinea and Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone. His war in Liberia saw almost 300 thousand Liberians dead, from a pre war population of 3.5 million and hundreds of West African peace keepers (Ecomog) killed under Nigerian command.

 

Taylor, at the peak of power

Liberia’s Charles Taylor is the indisputable embodiment of the African warlord, killing at will until he was elected president. For 14 years he terrorized Western Africa and daring anyone to stand in his way. Liberians and the world will know his fate this week Thursday if he will be a free man or if he will spend the rest of his life in jail for his crimes. The Taylor verdict should be big news for several reasons, say analysts. For one, men like Joseph Kony and his Lord Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda have exploited children in war like Taylor. Kony has also been indicted and could face justice soon, but has so far dodged capture, and two, African  leaders who rule by force of arms against their own people will now be looking over their shoulders. If he is found guilty, it could signals an end of an era and beginning of a new one. The move would bring relief to those who have suffered under the atrocities of the man who once describe himself as the “most mischievous Liberian alive.” The verdict is expected with much anticipation. 

Taylor though, still has supporters in Liberia, and leading the chorus is his estrange wife Jewel Howard Taylor, now senator from Taylor’s former strong hold of Bong County who disagrees, that he did any wrong. “I still don't see the connection of how he could be held responsible for those things done in Sierra Leone when they were actually done by Sierra Leonean armed forces…however," Ms. Taylor continued " if you talk about the crisis in Liberia, then that's a different story," she said in an interview with The Guardian.

Taylor is being tried by The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), which was set up under the auspices of the United Nations in 2002 to put on trial those most responsible for the vicious aggression suffered in the West African country during its bloody conflict. The limps of babies, their fathers and mothers were on occasions cut off with machetes by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) fighters loyal to Foday Sankoh,  with support from Charles Taylor, witnesses have said. Sankoh was apprehended, but he died in custody. The former Liberian President was indicted in 2003, while still president for those crimes including murder, rape, sexual slavery and recruiting child soldiers. He was subsequently captured in Nigeria in 2006 and briefly deported to Liberia. He was not permitted to leave the plane at Liberia’s Roberts International Airport (RIA). Within hours of arriving home, he was whisked off and immediately flown to Sierra Leone, before being transferred to The Hague.

The three-year trial in the Netherlands has been dramatic, and created a huge publicity in August 2010, when British  super model Naomi Campbell testified that she received 'dirty uncut diamonds' from Taylor at a party in Nelson Mandela’s house in 1997. At the time the party took place in South Africa, Taylor was recognized by the United Nations as a peacemaker; the prosecution contends he used that appointment to continue warfare. Charles Taylor was born in 1948 in Arthington, Montserrado County and deposed from power in 2003, when he resigned the presidency and accepted asylum in Nigeria, as insurgents were on the verge of taking the capital. His trial according to reports is estimated at about 250million. The costs were footed mostly by the United States, with Britain promising to provide his cell at a maximum security prison if he is found guilty .

Liberia’s Charles Taylor will be the first former sitting president in the world to hear a verdict from the International Criminal Court (ICC). The former president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic was tried there for encouraging war in the Balkans during the 1990s. He died before judgment was handed down. At the ICC also, the former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo is currently in jail awaiting trial for crimes he allegedly committed while holding on to power in an electoral dispute that saw many dead about a year ago.